Battle Royale UK: Requiem
by Jagged-11
Summary: In an effort to counter growing trends in juvenile violence and truancy, the UK adopts the Battle Royale program. A class of 32 teenagers is to be taken to a remote island and forced to kill one another until only one remains.
1. Prologue

2011 seemed to be the start of a new era, or to be more precise the reliving of a past decade as the greed and materialism that the 1980s entailed became accepted as necessary for a successful work and social ethos. However on October the 18th the bubble of illusionary invulnerability and self-importance that America had been indulging in, irretrievably burst. The second Wall Street crash caused haywire across the globe as nations quickly increased their trade tariffs in an effort to shield themselves from the economic depression that was causing uncontrollable (and rampant) violence and hooliganism across the USA and Japan (whose stock markets had plummeted to previously unheard of depths).

Over the course of the next two years, nations became more insular from one another as they all but ceased trading in an effort to become self-sufficient and capable of coping with the rising level of unemployment and ballooning crime rates. Whilst America seemed on the brink of a second civil war, as it's states resorted to factionalism and open hostility with one another, Japan's maverick politician Yuuto Leung conceived of a novel experiment that could be utilised to quash the growing trend of juvenile violence and truancy; namely the 'Battle Royale' program. I shall be brief in explaining the rules, not least because each nations program differed in the fine details, but essentially a class of students selected (supposedly) randomly are placed within a battle environment, given a variety of weapons and instructed to kill one another with the last adolescent standing being the victor. Though the Japanese government hid behind a facade of morality in an effort to justify such extreme measures, there was to be much financial gain for them and the TV networks who broadcasted the events of the game. The pay-per view carnage netted appallingly large amounts of profit; however the government found that an even greater source of revenue was the illicit gambling that took place as punters betted on who they considered to be the likeliest to champion. Soon the government had this taxed and as the income started to pour in they found their previously empty coffers now filling at a seemingly unstoppable rate.

America soon adopted the scheme and was swiftly followed by France and then Italy, all whom benefited from an improvement in the economy (and a marginal decrease in crime) in the process. Throughout this Britain, Spain and Germany denounced these excessively harsh tactics as inhumane and sadistic. But despite the claims of the UK's prime minister to the contrary, they themselves were buckling under the strain of a floundering economy and widespread felony perpetrated by many of their citizens (particularly those in their teenage years). Such was the unrest and dissatisfaction with the Labour government, that the right wing (borderline fascist) British National Party ('BNP') saw fit to stage a small scale coup and usurp the current government from its position of power. With remarkable ease they seized control but the radical changes that the public expected did not materialise. Although government legislation started to be subtly intolerant towards all those who weren't white Christians, nothing truly dire had yet occurred. Eventually however, the government tired of its ineffectual efforts to make a change and decided to imitate the drastic strategies of their neighbours.

Bray Wood, a prominent boarding school for the financially affluent was selected and Class 5ScA were chosen to be the contenders in the UK's first Battle Royale. Under the pretext of a Geography field trip the students boarded their bus, blissfully unaware that a few hours later they were to be knocked unconscious and kidnapped in order to participate in a battle against one another. Here is their story….

**Student Matrix**

Male Students

1. Tian Berkley

2. Fei Yan

3. Edward Devereux

4. Daniel Swane

5. Simon Holcombe

6. Anthony Stapleton

7. Jeremy Callaghan

8. Ben Ackart

9. Fergal Mills

10. Diego Paredes

11. Christopher Wendell

12. David Colville

13. Saul Emerson

14. Brendan Gilchrist

15. Phil Argyle

16. Nate Benedict

Female Students

1. Tulista Patel

2. Arabella Weir

3. Sue Cathcart

4. Daisy Donahue

5. Joanna Simpson

6. Liz Dunn

7. Nicole Colville

8. Cassandra Douglas

9. Laura Parsons

10. Jewel Siu Tung

11. Anne Priestly

12. Jun Ishibashi

13. Clara Beauchamp

14. Frankie Almond Smith

15. Sylvie Becker

16. Krisha Patel


	2. Hour 0: 32 Students Remain

11: 27 PM Day 0

Silence pervaded the classroom. It was pokey and drab, with only one weak fluorescent light that flickered every other minute to illuminate it, meaning that the kids could only make out the gaunt silhouettes of the three figures at the front of the classroom. The students sat hunched on the floor, some in close packs with their brethren whilst others isolated themselves in corners, almost all of them cowering in fear, understanding all too well the reason why they were there.

A calm mellifluous voice spoke from behind the desk "Sanderson turn the other lights on please". A well built man approached the entrance to the classroom (which for whatever reason was lacking a door) and quickly pressed two switches. Nate Benedict, along with most of his peers, shielded his eyes with his right hand as another two fluorescent strips unleashed an unforgiving bleached white light that engulfed the room. He was seated on the uncomfortable wooden floor next to his two closest companions; Simon on the left, Ben on the right. He glanced at Simon who was frantically rubbing his eyes; clearly he too was having difficulty adjusting to the sudden shift in brightness, but essentially seemed intact and moderately alert. The same could not be said for Ben who was bent forward and hyperventilating, seemingly on the brink of passing out. Ben was too astute to have any delusions about what was to happen next, his cousin Joanna had prepped him on the tactics the Americans had employed to ensnare their students but he had never believed the UK would follow suit and act so barbarically. Nate put his arm around the almost catatonic Ben, and reassuringly muttered "It's going to be all right I promise, don't worry we'll figure something out", Simon looked over in concern but was relieved to see Ben's breathing rate slow as he sat upright, his face drained of any colour but his lips pursed with staunch resolve; _he had to be strong, now was not the time for timidity and weakness_.

"Could I have your attention please?" the voice was unmistakably gentle. Nate relinquished his grasp on Ben and turned to where the sound emanated from to see a man behind the teacher's desk rise from his seat and walk towards the students. A pair of camouflaged soldiers meanwhile remained standing behind the desk, forcefully clutching their AK 47s and smiling malevolently. The man was of average height, attired in a faded beige cardigan and brown corduroy trousers, Nate estimated he was probably in his early 50s judging by his finely combed grey hair and goatee. He bore an uncanny resemblance to one of Nate's previous chemistry teachers and seemed ill suited for this position, as his genial manner belied the seriousness of their situation.

"I imagine that many of you are aware of why you're here - I'm guessing this because you seem like a gifted bunch - however I nonetheless extend a warm welcome to all of you on behalf of the Battle Royale administration who look forward to seeing your efforts within the program."

Nobody spoke. Any vague hopes that this was something other than 'Battle Royale' quickly dissipated as they were faced with the inescapable reality of what was going to happen to them. Frankie Almond Smith promptly began to sob loudly on Liz Dunn's shoulder whilst Cassandra Douglas clasped her hands to her mouth and looked desperately at her beau (the striking David Colville), praying that he would tell her that this was nothing other than a thoroughly sick joke. However one look at his ashen face told her this truly was for real and she too began to weep.

"Oh come now, there's no need to cry. Simply do your best and who knows you might even win? Remember everyone's a potential winner, it's just that some are better at hiding this than others"

Simon was about to ponder the validity of this statement but felt too downcast to use his considerable IQ to do so. Only Edward Devereux did not appear phased by these words, he simply sat there looking utterly bewildered. Diminutive in stature, with greasy blonde hair and round spectacles, he was without doubt an unimposing figure. He was also very autistic and often could not comprehend what was occurring around him or understand people's behaviour; he had absolutely no inkling of what the 'Battle Royale' program consisted of. He raised his hand.

"Please sir; I'm confused about what this Battle Royale program is?"

Fergal Mills and Tian Berkley rolled their eyes and snorted at his ignorance, Phil Argyle - the third of Tian's triumvirate of aggressive louts - looked incredulously at the clueless Edward, wondering how anyone could be so sheltered from reality.

"The Battle Royale program is put most simply, a game ....."

"A game!" Edward perkily interrupted

"Yes were you will go head to head with your classmates"

"But how does one win?" asked an increasingly puzzled Edward, oblivious to the glares his fellow pupils were giving him. The man gave the briefest of sly smiles and then answered; "You eliminate one another until only one remains".

"Yes but _how_ do we eliminate one another" came Edward's irritable response, he couldn't understand why this bizarre and eccentrically dressed man was constantly skirting the question. At this point Liz pushed Frankie from her shoulders and leant towards him and hissed;

"For fuck's sake, how do you think idiot? We murder each other!" Edward's bewilderment swiftly metamorphosed into blind terror.

"But why us....who are you...why do we have to play this game, I don't want to, it's not fair!" Edward stammered angrily, tears welling up in his eyes.

"Now there's no need for histrionics" the man chided pleasantly "I can't give you my name for security reasons, but you may use the alias Mr. Samuels. You are here because your school was selected by an impartial lottery. However since there are no definable classes at Bray Wood school in your year, we simply selected the top Science set, feeling that the higher level of intellect you posses and your wide ranging scientific knowledge would make you best suited for the Battle Royale. But I'm afraid Edward there's no option not to play, it's compulsory for the 32 of you and the only way out is death or victory, I'll leave you to decide which option you find more palatable."

Suddenly Simon felt even more uneasy; had Mr. Samuels made a careless mistake or was it intentional? He looked around the classroom, trying to discern who was there, afraid that he already knew who wasn't. Simon slowly raised his hand, receiving a withering look from Liz in the process.

"Yes Simon?" his voice was still gratingly amiable and his smile was ridiculously toothy and wide.

"Mr. Samuels where's Martyn Taylor?" the smile quickly vanished and was replaced by a frown as Mr. Samuel's face became much more severe. He paced back over to his desk and turned to face the entire class, when he spoke it was tersely and with bitter disgust.

"Martyn Taylor awoke before the rest of you. It was necessary to have an even number of boys and girls for the sake of fairness. As there were a larger amount of males, administration concluded it would be necessary to liquidate one of the boys. When Master Taylor regained control of his senses he became very difficult and obnoxious, much as our psychological profile on him had predicted. He will not be participating with you, I trust you understand."

"You killed him!" wailed Frankie. She'd despised Martyn intensely but now seemed like as good an opportunity as any to get angry and the overflowing of her emotions was proving remarkably therapeutic to her nerves.

"Of course" replied Mr. Samuels with masterful indifference.

"Genuinely?" asked Daniel Swane, feigning an expression of horrified revulsion at the news - he too had always been at odds with Martyn, even more so than Frankie, and was secretly elated by the report of his demise.

"Yes, Martyn is most definitely deceased. I'd show you his corpse but it's not a pleasant sight. He put up a very fierce struggle and was surprisingly strong; it all ended up being a rather messy affair." Mr Samuels then proceeded to gesticulate to an unpleasantly large blood stain etched on the wall at the back of the classroom. Simon felt nauseas; he didn't dare contemplate how they'd ended Martyn's life and was revolted at Mr. Samuels's casual tone. The students sat and stared at the patch of blood, each imagining what had occurred (with varying degrees of accuracy); the only sound was Frankie's now amplified whimpering which cut through the sepulchral silence like a rapier. Liz was getting frustrated at Frankie's incessant crying; her school blouse was becoming increasingly damp around her shoulder blades and these torrents of emotion showed no sign of abating. She decided that the best course of action was probably to try and comfort her, but Liz herself was so shaken up that she was completely unsure of how to do so.

All the meanwhile Joanna Simpson was staring at the map of an island (that she assumed correctly to be the one she was currently stranded on) which was pinned on the board behind Mr. Samuel's desk, trying to calculate a plan of action. She was briefly concerned that it might be a dummy map used to deceive them of the Island's layout, however she knew that there was no choice other than to put her faith in the honesty of the BR administrators - something she was justifiably reluctant to do. Samuels himself had questioned BR admin about the advisability of allowing the pupils a preview of the Island and the locations of the buildings, but he had been informed that only the most resourceful students were likely to examine it (unless the others were directed to do so) and hence they deserved a reward for taking the initiative.

Seeing that Joanna was beginning to raise her hand, Mr. Samuels quickly spoke again with his grotesquely affable vocal intonations "Can we please leave inquiries until later; I need to explain the rules by midnight and I've only got fifteen minutes to do so, so please settle down and pay attention" after briefly savouring the pleasurable silence he continued, "the program has a duration of 72 consecutive hours, if by the end of it there is not one single overall winner all remaining students will be executed" he paused again, "the Battle Royale will be broadcast across the country, no doubt you'll observe the many cameras placed around the island. Please do not vandalise or try to defile them in any way; we will not tolerate this kind of deviant behaviour." He picked up a pencil from his desk and with a warm smile snapped it in two. The class flinched in unison.

"Now, I want you all to put on a good show, not only for the sake of the viewer ratings but also for the dignity of your families. Remember everyone's watching you, so make the effort to impress and show them what you're made of. The viewers will also have an influence over how the game progresses, so it's worth garnering their favour. Every six hours I shall make an announcement detailing the number of deaths, the perpetrators of these kills and the areas of the island that are to become danger zones an hour after my reports have ended. The viewing public will nominate which zones become dangerous and their decision will most likely be predicated upon who currently inhabits that particular part of the island and whether or not they're doing something constructive and/or entertaining with their time. Every six hours they will also vote for their favourite kill, the individual who is bestowed with this honour will be the recipient of a useful prize. If you want to attain this 'gift' (and trust me, you should do) make the slaughter innovative; don't be afraid to be creative that's what the people want! If there are any disciplinary matters the BR administrators will consult the viewers and they'll decide upon a suitable punishment."

Joanna put up her hand again, but this time didn't wait for Mr. Samuels's approval for her to speak.

"Mr. Samuels, are there any cameras in the buildings?" she asked curtly, pleased by his evident surprise at the question.

"No there are not" he answered simply, his voice reversing from faux conviviality to succinct monotone "You will not interrupt me again; if you do the consequences will be highly undesirable". Many of the students were perplexed by both this question and its answer; however Joanna understood exactly what this meant and knew what the implications were.

"To continue; some of you may be aware that you currently have metallic collars around your necks". Only Edward was not conscious of the slim piece of metal that snugly wrapped around his fairly thick neck and on an impulse began to tug it. It was too tight he only wanted to loosen it; there was no reason for him to die prematurely from suffocation. He suddenly became aware that the others were moving away from him, expressions of disbelief adorning their already aghast faces, Edward ignored them (why were they always so unremittingly nasty to him?) and continued to pull on the collar, now exerting a greater force on it than before.

Suddenly he felt his hands being wrenched away from the collar; he yelped in pain and looked up to see David Colville looming over him.

"Don't touch the fucking collar!" David yelled exasperatedly. Bloodshed was inevitable but he wanted to delay it for as long as possible or maybe even wholly prevent it somehow.

"Such concern on your part is touching David, but you needn't have worried," trilled the obviously amused Mr. Samuels, "a student's collar will only become active when he or she exits this building, so do feel free Edward to continue with your futile efforts to extract the collar from your neck I can assure you the only thing you'll accomplish is giving yourself a rash".

Frankie brushed aside a few locks of blonde hair from her perfectly proportioned face and raised her trembling left hand, convinced she already knew the answer to her morbid question.

"If the collars are activated, that means......"

"They'll explode." said Mr. Samuels flatly. Frankie gulped and spoke again, her voice wavering with anxiety as she began her second morose inquiry.

"You mean we'll be decapitated?"

"Most certainly not my dear," he replied, looking truly baffled by the suggestion. Frankie stared blankly at him in utter in confusion, he smiled darkly and explained, "The blast will merely blow a large gash in your jugular, and you'll bleed to death within a matter of seconds."

"I think I'm going to be sick." gasped Frankie.

"Charming," Mr. Samuels sarcastically mumbled, "Although I would've assumed that - judging by your svelte physique - you weren't a girl with much of an appetite and thus wouldn't have had much food to regurgitate. But I guess we all make mistakes....." Frankie glowered furiously and even toyed with the idea of lunging at him and plunging her expertly manicured nails into his piggy little eyes. However Liz was holding her arm in a vice like grip and Frankie was far too scared and tired to do anything dramatic.

"The collars will only be detonated if you enter a danger zone or if you attempt to remove them or cause any kind of trouble. Believe me when I say that you will be quite incapable of detaching these collars from your necks, so unless you want to make the game easier for others by carelessly sacrificing your life I'd counsel you to leave your collars well alone."

Nate had tired of Mr. Samuel's cheeriness and total indifference to that fact he was condemning 31 out of 32 children to death. Was he going to die? Perhaps, but he wouldn't go without a fight or without damning the insane hypocrisy of the Battle Royale act.

"Why are we here?" Nate calmly asked.

"I'm sure I made it quite obvious the first time I explained and I've no desire to repeat myself"

"No, I don't mean the procedure for selecting a class, I'm referring to the BR act itself and I'm asking what your rationalization is for it?"

Mr. Samuels walked the brief distance from his desk to where Nate sat (which was at the front of the class, as always) and peered down at him, his expression totally imperceptible.

"You would be Nate Benedict I presume?"

Nate nodded in agreement; maintaining eye contact with his foe - a tactic that usually disconcerted his teachers but did not seem to be having much effect on Mr. Samuels.

"Allegedly you're the unofficial leader of your year's intelligentsia elite, from what I gather"

"A diminished intelligentsia now that Martyn is six feet under" Nate coldly replied.

Nate could certainly stake a claim for being the school's resident theorist and philosopher and a talented orator to boot, with preppy good looks that counterbalanced his scholarly intensity. He possessed charisma aplenty and was fortunate enough to have a select clique - and it most certainly was a clique, though Nate made no effort to deny this - of likeminded and equally brilliant students. Martyn to some extent had existed on the margins of this group (he was perceived by Nate and Ben to be too much of a crude anarchist to comfortably conform to their Marxist ideals) but Simon and Ben were most certainly, as termed by Liz, his 'lackeys'. The three even resembled each other with their brunette hair styled in a short French crop (they'd had these hairstyles since arriving at Bray Wood and felt no compulsion to change them) and could usually be relied upon to make provocative and droll remarks during lessons that were either boring or taught by a self-important doddering old fool. But if Nate was the leader, Simon the wit and Martyn the self-absorbed brute, Ben was the demure book lover, surprisingly meek in comparison to his three cohorts with a placid demeanour and a caring nature.

"It will be quite some time before Martyn is laid to rest I can assure you" Mr. Samuels brusquely informed him, an enigmatic smile forming on his lips.

"You haven't answered my question"

"I wasn't aware that I was required to obey your commands. Or perhaps the BR admin just screwed up and forgot to mention it to me; they can be so careless sometimes, it truly does defy belief" said Mr. Samuels with absent-minded derision, he appeared distracted and uninterested in the conversation, but Nate persisted.

"How can you morally justify this inhumanity? We're not even the juvenile delinquents the BR program is supposed to deal with, we're reckoned to be model students of superior intellect".

"And so modest as well," Mr. Samuels retorted sardonically, "did you just assume that because you attend a prestigious boarding school that commands fees of up to £17,000 a year, and because you happen to be a group of over achieving schmucks that you were automatically exempt from Battle Royale?"

"By your own admission, you chose us specifically because we were in the top Science set and deemed to be intelligent." Nate was managing to suppress his bubbling rage but his voice was becoming noticeably more agitated as his anger mounted.

"So you believe it would have been fairer to select a Science set with an inferior IQ to yours then, because their lack of intelligence would've made it more acceptable for them to die, is that what you think?"

"Why force any set of students of any intelligence from whatever type school to suffer this?"

"There are innumerable reasons."

"Name one." Nate challenged, he had not yet broken eye contact with Mr. Samuels who was becoming observably angrier with every well chosen word Nate uttered.

"In case you hadn't noticed, the world is in ruins. Economies are failing; even more people are unemployed than at the peak of Weimar Germany's industrial meltdown. And what do you children do? Nothing, other than perpetuate our problems. You ignore what's happening around you and relish the irresponsibility adolescence supposedly allows you; even before you're legally of age you drink, do drugs and screw each other without caring what infections you catch. You increase the adult world's grief by playing truant and participating in crime, often attacking your elders - your _betters_ - without remorse. Well now it's our turn to fuck everything up, and you're the little brats who are just going to have to endure it, just like we adults have endured your behaviour for centuries." Mr. Samuels did not at any time raise his voice; he kept it quiet, accentuating every word in order to instil fear within his already petrified students. He had not yet looked away from the defiant Nate and was resolute in his intentions to prove beyond doubt the unquestionable logic of Battle Royale.

"You were not selected because you were the best or the worst, the strongest or the weakest, you merely did not have lady luck on your side. And before any of you begin to wallow in self-pity, regarding yourselves as paradigms of chastity and virtue who do not deserve to be here, I'm well aware that many of you have had chequered and sordid pasts that have involved you inflicting hurt upon others. So don't put up any kind of pretence that you're anything other than vile little shits, all you have that differentiates you from the rest are scholarships and rich daddies. Only when the youth realises that what it's doing is fundamentally wrong will the government abolish the BR act. So Nate, are you able use your brain to understand that – or are your grey cells working overtime on preening yourself as a martyr to the tyranny of us adults?"

For seven interminably long seconds there was not a sound, no one dared even breathe. The students knew that Nate was playing with fire and that no matter how many clever points he made he would be powerless to extricate themselves from their predicament, but they awaited his response with both awe and trepidation.

"If our government is only concerned with selflessly eradicating the problems posed by teenagers," Nate began, trying with limited success to suppress a smile, sure that he was about to undo the knot of lies that Mr. Samuels had so lyrically woven together, "then why does it televise the game so it can make an immense financial profit from perverts who want to see a kiddie massacre?"

Mr. Samuels silently turned around and returned to his desk, whereupon he opened a drawer and after a brief interlude of clumsily fidgeting inside it, extracted a snub nosed revolver and strode back to where the indomitable Nate sat. He pointed the gun at Nate's forehead. Nate didn't even blink. The mockery he'd make of this sadistic institution and its pompous flunky would be his ultimate victory over authority, the kind that Martyn had longed to accomplish but never was (and now indeed, never would be) given the opportunity to do so.

But Nate had other emotional facets and needs that only a handful of people were aware of. For starters, he was suffering from the common teenage affliction universally referred to as love. It is said that in life the two emotions that cannot be modulated are rage and desire, and Nate's love was insatiable and passionate (he'd always been a person with an enthusiasm for hyperbole). Luckily for him, the subject of his amorous wants reciprocated this love and their relationship had even been consummated, despite the fact they were underage. But whilst he valued this relationship above all else, there were moments when his pride took precedent over good sense and he lost control, becoming reckless solely because he wanted to demonstrate his academic superiority over everybody else. Whilst at School the worst reprimand his arrogance could incur was a detention, here the rules were different and both Ben and Simon knew it. However they did not try to deter Nate from pursuing his argument since they were well aware that their attempts to stop him would only be seen by him as an incentive to continue.

"Nate, if you insult me I will tolerate it – though not without giving you a nasty injury – however if you dare to slander the government, I shall act decisively and without mercy." Snapped Mr. Samuels, his ferocity was evident despite his voice's low volume. His face was burgundy red and the veins across his forehead bulged magnificently, it was clear to everyone - apart from Nate it appeared - that he had reached his boiling point.

"But Mr. Samuels," replied Nate with an expression of mock horror "I'm stunned you could even contemplate for a moment that I would make any attempts to disparage our government, after all why should I bear them any ill will? They've only forsaken me to either butcher my friends or be a member of the carnage myself – all perfectly acceptable of course. But then again I suppose it can't be helped that they're a bunch of emotionless fuckers, after all why....."

Ben had been numb with fear from the moment Mr. Samuels withdrew the revolver from his desk, staring at the floor as his vision blurred and his head pounded. Every possibility of what could happen next played out in his head in a swirl of gaudy colours and screams of anguish. He only awakened from this hellish trance when the two sharp shots rang out with excruciating clarity. He turned to his left, praying that Nate would be sat upright and smiling as boldly as ever, the two bullets having being shot into thin air as a warning. But when he glanced over, he looked straight into the eyes of the mortified Simon who was frozen in astonishment and terror. He looked down. Nate was sprawled on the floor, two puddles of rich crimson spreading across his white shirt from where the bullets had entered (Mr. Samuels had changed his aim in order to guarantee the pain lasting longer). Ben clutched his hands to his mouth and muffled a cry. Nate rolled his head to the right; he was breathing rapidly with what little oxygen remained in his lungs and was beginning to cough up blood. He knew that he only had a few minutes, maybe even less, before it was all over for him.

Ben leant forward, removing his hands from his mouth and trying to determine whether there was any way he could constrict the flow of blood. Suddenly he felt a clammy hand tightly take hold of his. Nate held on with surprising strength and choked as he urgently tried to articulate his last words. There were so many things he wanted to say to Ben; he'd said them all before but this would be the last occasion he'd have to reiterate them, however all he managed to do was stutter and smile ever so slightly. Nate had expected that his vision would become distorted and gradually fade as he died, but instead he found that he'd never seen the world with such lucidity as he gazed at Ben's stricken face. He'd always been an agnostic, but he thanked God (or indeed any supreme deity that presided over the earth) for letting the last thing he ever laid eyes on be the person he adored more than any other.

Nate's hand went limp. Ben - and Simon for that matter - stifled their tears, not wanting to give Mr. Samuels the satisfaction of seeing their hurt. Mr. Samuels remained standing, his pistol pointed at the class of shell-shocked 17 year olds.

"It is now 11:59 PM, in one minute I will begin a role call of students and release you onto the island. In the meantime, if anyone else has any similarly challenging insights about the workings of our government, please do feel free to share them with us."

31 Students Remain.


	3. Hour 1: 31 Students Remain

00:01 AM Day 1

"I now will proceed to call out your names," Mr. Samuels had finally lowered his pistol but his voice was still harsh and gruff, "I will repeat your name once. If you do not respond to me after being addressed these two times, Sanderson and Adair," he motioned to the two particularly smug looking guards, "will have to educate you about the penalties a person must suffer for cowardice."

Ben had not yet looked away from the cadaverous Nate. He felt the sublimely horrible sense of loss and emptiness spreading across his exhausted body, he knew there was no escaping the reality that death had torn them apart and that there were no earthly means to reunite them again. This melancholia perpetuated as he watched the colour drain from Nate's corpse as the rigor mortis set in, his formerly vivacious and cocky visage now a pallid shell of what it once was.

"The order in which you leave will be random rather than alphabetical. You'll leave at one minute intervals between each other through the entrance to this classroom," he pointed to the doorframe and gave a malicious smile, "upon leaving the classroom you'll find yourself in a corridor. The left side is lined with soldiers, all of whom are remarkably proficient with their weapons, whilst at the end of the corridor on the right hand side there are several racks of duffel bags."

Apart from Ben, the whole class was attentive to Mr. Samuels's instructions as they came to the grim realisations that escape was impossible. Their hope petered away and many of them resigned themselves to obeying the rules of the game, seeing no other viable alternative.

"The soldier at the end of the corridor will hand you an indiscriminately selected bag and you will exit the building, your collar now activated. If you loiter within the corridor or attempt to take more than one bag or indeed bags other than the one you are given," Mr. Samuels's smile widened and clapped his hands together "you will be shot."

Mr. Samuels gazed at the students, all of whom were awash with dread, and thought about which of them stood the best chance of triumphing over the others whilst who amongst them were dead weight with a pitiful chance of survival. Within a matter of seconds he had decided upon which kid he'd be placing his money on.

"Within your bag you will find some bottled water – and Frankie before you ask, it isn't Evian – bread, a map with a pen for marking down danger zones, a flashlight and a digital watch (I doubt any of you will have noticed, but those of you who were wearing watches will discover that they have been confiscated). However the item that will be of most use to you is the weapon you receive. There are three classes of weaponry, class one is firearms (i.e. pistols), class two is melee weapons (i.e. daggers) and class three is..." he paused, ensuring he had everyone's (including Ben's) attention "well class three isn't a weapon per se, but it will be of use to you."

"Of the 32 of you – oh my apologies, I meant the _31_of you," Mr. Samuels shot a particularly cruel smirk in Ben's direction, "30 of the 31 of you will receive a weapon in one of the three stated categories, some will be luckier than others but nobody will receive anything that is absolutely useless. Except that one unlucky person who will find – well let's just say that he or she is going to receive something that will most certainly be a surprise, and not necessarily a pleasant one."

27 of the 31 remaining students inwardly groaned; convinced they were to be the one saddled with the dud weapon that would immediately render them the most vulnerable prey for those who had been blessed with a better arsenal of armaments.

"Well it is now 8 minutes past midnight, so I'd best get started with sending you off to slay each other. Before that, three quick concluding thoughts– firstly, the HQ (i.e. where you are now) will be a permanent danger zone for the duration of the game. Secondly if you wish to view the rules of the game, you'll find them listed on the back of your map and finally you may take your school backpacks with you if you so wish. Ok now the time for chit-chat is over so I'll leave you with one last piece of advice before you depart: it's everyman for himself and God against all – so don't trust anyone!"

Mr. Samuels picked up a clipboard from his desk, took out a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles from his shirt's front pocket and began to read out the names he saw before him.

"Boy #1: Tian Berkley."

For most, the prospect of being the first to leave would have been daunting, but not for the tenacious Tian. He rose to his feet and picked up his backpack, brushed aside a straggly wisp of his shoulder length black hair from his face and strutted towards the corridor. Mr. Samuels put his hand out to block him.

"When your name is called, the correct thing to do is to answer with an acknowledgement of your presence," he coldly informed him.

Tian was by all standards an intimidating individual. Tall and well built, with his face usually contorted into a leer, he didn't have a habit of adhering to rules or authority. He was larger than Mr. Samuels, and Simon wondered whether it was only because he was flanked by two well equipped mercenaries that Mr. Samuels was able to look Tian straight in the eye without shaking with fright.

"Ja mein Fuhrer!" Tian yelled, performing a mock Nazi salute, clearly disdainful of Mr. Samuels as he pushed past him.

As Tian walked down the corridor, paying no regard to the grimacing soldiers, Mr. Samuels called after him:

"I expected better from you!"

"So sue me!" Tian retorted. He snatched his bag from the soldier and ran off into the night.

Mr. Samuels chuckled, shook his head and turned to the students. "Be wary of him," he warned, "you probably noticed but it looks like he's something of a fighter."

* * *

Tian settled himself within the bushes. The exit of the HQ led out onto a large semi-circle of gravel, but beyond that there was only the dense and threatening forest (the only visible pathway was on the left of the HQ exit and led off to the West side of the island).

The predatory survival of the fittest that constituted Battle Royale did not dishearten Tian, quite the contrary; it made him feel infinitely stronger. School was the animal kingdom of backstabbing and bickering teenagers, all trying to assert their dominance over the other and desperately trying to endure the never ending purgatory of adolescence without suffering too many wounds. If Tian could beat out the competition in school (with his fists rather than his brain – even though his mental power was remarkable considering his thug status), he could do it here. However he needed assistance (at least for now); those who hunted in packs were able to pick off their victims with greater rapidity and ease, both in the world of carnivores and the infrastructure of a school's social hierarchy.

After retrieving his flashlight from his bag he began to grope around for his assigned weapon. Eventually he drew out a large metal case (ever the cynic, Tian guessed it was most likely contained a golf club), within a matter of seconds he'd prised it open and once Tian had uncovered its contents he could only beam with delight (and continued to do so until he heard a noise and realised that the next student had now been let loose onto the island).

* * *

"Girl #1: Tulista Patel."

Tulista looked frantically at her twin, unsure of how to act but clinging to the vague hope that her sister might have managed to conceive of a method to disentangle themselves from the mess they now found themselves in.

"Tulista Patel start fucking moving unless you want to end up like Nate."

"Krisha what..." Tulista began to say to her beloved twin.

"Go!" Krisha hissed in response.

"I'm here." said Tulista in a quavering voice.

"That's lovely to know dear, but I don't want you here I want you out _there_, preferably engaging in an act of barbaric violence against one of your classmates. Now move!"

Tulista picked up her bag, hastily kissed her sister goodbye and ran out into the corridor. Krisha breathed deeply, trying to retain her composure as she began to brood over whether she would ever see her sister alive again. The two made little effort to be physically distinctive from one another, apart from Krisha opting to wear her long dark hair in a plait whilst Tulista let it fall down over her shoulders. Krisha (along with her sister) were of Indian descent, and had lived a comfortable life in the middle class suburbs of London since the age of three under the strict tutelage of their aunt and uncle (their parents still resided in India). Each possessed smooth brown skin, penetrating auburn eyes and a sensuous mouth, however whilst many of the girls at Bray Wood used their looks as a form of barter to attain power, the Patel siblings could lay claim to be being truly unsullied when it came to matters of romance (let alone intercourse). The daughters' of doggedly conservative Indian parents had already had each of them betrothed to marry two respectable Indian gentlemen once they reached the age of eighteen (though mercifully the two said men were of the same age as the Patel sisters).

Krisha hadn't been too upset about this; the boy she was set to marry seemed perfectly nice (and not all that bad looking either) and as she'd been brought up to expect an arranged marriage since the tender age of five she'd never had much opportunity to cultivate any different aspirations. Tulista was less enthused by the prospect of marrying a man she hardly knew (partly because her chosen husband was extremely boring) but neither of them had any yearning to go against the wishes of their loving family. Unsurprisingly they were viewed with distrust at Bray Wood – a school where sex was readily available (though always done secretly) and an annual (though unofficial) competition took place amongst the girls to see which of them could wear the most revealing outfit to the end of term disco (needless to say Frankie had won it three years running, despite the Herculean efforts of Nicole Colville to become the new title holder) – and hence had never been able to branch out socially. Krisha therefore knew that other than her twin she had no one else she could truly rely upon and it was consequently imperative that she found her sister as quickly as possible.

Unless Tian found her first.

Krisha shuddered at the thought and tried to block it from her mind.

* * *

Tulista wandered out into the open, relishing the freshness of the chilly air and the misplaced sense of freedom she now felt. She sighed. It was time to make a decision, something she felt extremely ill-equipped to do. All her life her family had dictated to her how she should dress, how she should behave and what she should say, but now there was no one other than herself to make the choices and it discomforted her immensely.

Suddenly there was the sound of foliage being crunched under foot. Tulista had always been an avid and talented tennis player and had the reflexes to prove it. She turned towards the source of the noise a fraction of a second after the disturbance reached her ears. Obviously it was Tian Berkley. Tulista did a brief assessment of Tian's personality; the results were not encouraging. Several months previously he'd spread lewd rumours around the school about an erotic liaison between himself and the twins (which they had of course vehemently denied). As is usually the case when rumours are spread about those who are not within an influential clique, the gossip circulated quickly and whilst nobody believed it to be at all factual (Tian was so repulsively ugly with his greasy black mop of hair and squashed face, that it was impossible to believe that girls as gorgeous as the twins could even look at him without feeing queasy), many of their female classmates nonetheless exploited the rumour to it's absolute maximum out of petty jealousy and spitefulness.

There was a click. Did he have a gun? Tulista wasn't willing to find out by standing there like a sitting duck and she immediately dashed into the forest. She could but pray that she'd be able to catch up with Krisha later.

* * *

"Boy #2: Fei Yan."

Fei got up quickly and with a moderate amount of self-assurance, though moments later he nearly tripped over as reached down for his oversized bag. He was fairly short and skinny, with buck teeth and an overall appearance that screamed 'NERD ALERT!' After getting his kit he hurriedly left the building; already sure of what he was going to do and how he was going to do it.

"Girl #2: Arabella Weir"

If you looked at Arabella in passing, you would not have thought she was the kind of person who made much of an impression on others. You wouldn't be far wrong. Once described (by Liz – it was always Liz and Frankie who coined the other girl's nicknames) as an 'elongated twig with about as much charisma as a mutilated slug', she was so mousy and insecure that people were prone to bumping into her simply because they were not aware of her presence. She had the chameleonic ability to blend in with her surroundings because of the perception that she was so bland and uninteresting there was no point in even looking at her (predictably it was Frankie and Liz who propagated this dislike of her).

Her short ginger hair was also a source of scorn amongst her peers (when they could be bothered to notice her), not least because it was soon discovered (by Frankie of course) that the unattractive bangs of hair that fell across her forehead were there to hide the onset of a particularly nasty and virulent spate of acne. But Arabella was also a rebel (albeit a minor one); she had always abhorred playing sport and was proving remarkably adept at getting out of it. She had a plethora of excuses she could use (the most common one being to do with her menstrual cycle) and had not yet failed in absenting herself from hockey whilst evading trouble with the teachers simultaneously. Why should Battle Royale be any different in that respect? If she was injured before the game commenced it would be inappropriate for her to participate and they'd have to give her medical treatment (though they'd probably put her name down for the next Battle). But during the time period between the two 'games' there would be a window of opportunity to escape. She had to chance it – she could not and would not act in this theatre of humiliation.

As she ran down the corridor, the pale blue light seeping through the barred windows and casting shadows across the dimly lit corridor, she threw her rucksack from her arms and tumbled gracefully to the ground letting out a dignified cry of pain as she did so.

"I've hurt my ankle! I think it's broken, it hurts so fucking much! I can't move it! Please take me to a doctor!"

"Arabella if you don't get off the floor in five seconds I will have to have you terminated. I don't give a shit whether every bone in your body has spontaneously snapped; you will get up on your feet this instance or be killed for being a pathetic liar and a gutless coward." Mr. Samuels's replied, clearly unconvinced.

"I'm NOT FAKING IT!" Arabella screamed with all her might, but even as she spoke the two soldiers nearest to her raised their AK 47s, their fingers only millimetres away from the triggers.

"Five." Mr. Samuels began.

"Please! Don't do this!" wept Arabella.

"Four." Mr. Samuels continued, removing an apple from one of his pockets.

"Stop it! Stop it please!"

"Three." He nonchalantly began to juggle the apple between his hands

"Please don't, I haven't done anything!" Arabella pleaded, still deluding herself that he would see reason if she persisted.

"Two." His voice grew more bored, he was more preoccupied with examining the apple – checking to see if there were any flaws in its quality.

"No!"

"Shut her up." Mr. Samuels instructed the guard nearest the classroom's entrance to the corridor. He took a large bite of the juicy apple and groaned appreciatively "Hmmm, delicious."

Cassandra Douglas winced as the echo of three bursts of gunfire resonated around the classroom whilst Arabella let out one final high pitched scream. David Colville gently put his arms around Cassandra as the tears began to stream profusely down her beautiful face.

"What's the condition of her corpse?" asked Mr. Samuels disinterestedly.

Two soldiers stood over her, plumes of smoke elegantly uncurling from their AK 47s' gun barrels.

"Swiss cheese." One answered.

Mr. Samuels took another (even larger and more ferocious) bite of his apple and walked into the corridor, keen to admire the handiwork of the soldiers. Arabella's chest was riddled with a mass of bullets, her white blouse now bathed in the red of her blood. Two of the guards approached her carcass; one lifted her shoulders whilst the other grabbed her feet.

"No leave her there." Mr. Samuels snapped, raising his voice for the first time. The guards looked at him disbelievingly, but he offered them no explanations. He returned to his desk and sat down heavily in his chair, continuing to munch away at his apple whilst he rhythmically tapped his foot. Eventually he stood up again (apple no longer in hand) and spoke once more with the quiet menace he had perfected long ago:

"Her corpse will serve as a deterrent to any other person thinking of pulling that kind of stupid stunt," he picked up the clipboard from his desk and continued, "next up is Boy# 3: Edward Devereux – looks like you're the first in line to see what's left of boneheaded Bella."

Edward slowly stood up and walked guardedly towards the classroom exit. His eyes were bulging from their sockets and his bottom lip was trembling with terror. Just as he reached the corridor entrance he shrieked as he felt a hand grip his shoulder. He turned around to see (for the second time) David Colville, though this time his expression was one of empathy rather than irritation.

"You forgot your bag." He said softly, handing the rather ragged backpack over to the momentarily relived Edward.

"Thanks." Edward wasn't used to receiving consideration from his contemporaries and was touched by this gesture of benevolence from David.

"Good luck." Whispered David, forcing a smile as he turned away to go back to the silently sniffling Cassandra.

Edward slowly trekked down the corridor, looking at the ceiling in order to avoid the sight of Arabella's maimed body. He only caught a brief glimpse of her cadaver once, when he glanced down quickly to see the state of her remains out of morbid curiosity. Having reached the end of the corridor he took his bag and ran (though not very quickly – he was undoubtedly on the wrong side of chubby) outside, deciding the pathway to the west of the island would be the best route option.

"Girl #3: Sue Cathcart."

At Bray Wood, sandwiched between the heaven of popularity and the hell of self-esteem inadequacy there lies social limbo. Those who exist in it are either on the cusp of popularity or simply just in the mid-range area of the social spectrum. Sue Cathcart was one such person, though with her expertly applied cherry lip gloss and well groomed blonde hair, it was apparent to all that she intended to reach much greater heights on the reputation ladder. After receiving her bag she concluded it would be best to wait in the bushes for her friends in order to gain safety in numbers. Without a moments hesitation she hurried into the undergrowth, and after scouring within her bag for her weapon, withdrew an Uzi 9mm. She may have been stuck in the middle socially, but she was easily at the top in the realms of firearms.

"Boy #4: Daniel Swane."

It came as no surprise to anyone (least of all Daniel himself), that the ever-confident Daniel swaggered out of HQ with characteristic poise and assurance. However he wasn't one to linger outside and he promptly exited the area by the western pathway.

"Girl #4: Daisy Donahue."

With her short (almost boyish) black hair and freckles Daisy had a certain intangible cuteness (the fact that she had a good body shape was a plus too). But her usual energetic zest had been substituted for outright alarm. She mouthed "See you outside" to Sylvie Becker (who gave her the thumbs up in return) and jogged out into the corridor (trying not to look at Arabella on the way) to collect her bag.

"Boy #5: Simon Holcombe."

Ben looked imploringly at Simon. Within the space of a few micro-seconds, each had evaluated the other's likelihood of continued existence. Simon (unlike Nate, Ben and Martyn) was a sports-playing enthusiast and had the well defined body to match. With angular features, hawk like eyes and a sharp jaw line, he was physically able and made little secret of his competitive nature. He wasn't born a fighter, but he definitely had the skills to be converted into one.

Simon's prognosis of Ben's chance of survival was less reassuring. Simon had never doubted the basis for Nate's infatuation with Ben – he was certainly attractive – but he questioned whether Ben had the willpower to tough it out in a game like this. Though tall and slender, with hypnotically blue eyes and a smile that was kind but unforced, he was not a pretty boy by any stretch. Indeed Nate had always asserted (accurately) that he was 'idiosyncratically handsome'. Simon knew that Ben would most likely perish without his help (particularly in view of the fact that he was probably now traumatised irreparably by Nate's death) and was unwavering in his intentions to protect him (not because they're bond of friendship was especially strong – but it was what Nate would have wanted).

"Boy #5: Simon Holcombe, last call."

Simon got up, clapped his hand on Ben's shoulder as a mark of solidarity, and then ran to the corridor. There was the tedium of a one minute wait before the next name was called.

"Girl #5: Joanna Simpson."

* * *

Simon paced back and forth restlessly on the outskirts of the semi-circle, on tenterhooks as to whether Ben would be released shortly or if he was in for a long (and potentially perilous) wait.

But the figure that emerged from the HQ exit was not that of Ben, but that of Ben's American cousin: Girl #5, Joanna Simpson. She'd tied her long black hair into a pony tail with a rubber band and was sprinting determinedly towards Simon. She seized his left hand and dragged him with her into the forest.

"What the fuck were you doing?" she hissed, still running at a breakneck speed with Simon only just managing to keep up with her.

"I might ask you the same question!" Simon tartly answered. He abruptly stopped in his tracks; Joanna also halted and turned to face him, an expression of incredulity adorning her face.

"Are you retarded or something?" She asked. Her voice was an interesting hybrid of an American accent and British pronunciation, "You were out in the open, in the light and in range of Sue Cathcart, who (in case you didn't realise) happens to have a fucking Uzi!"

"I was waiting for Ben, nothing wrong with that is there?"

"There is when it means that not only does he end up as dead meat, but you do too!" she paused and then continued, "Look I hope Ben gets out OK too – he is my cousin remember – but we can't afford to wait around, we'll just have to try and locate him later."

"Do you know where we're going and what we're going to do?" Simon queried cautiously.

"'Course I do. I know everything, remember?" She playfully answered, with just the slightest of smiles, "But considering there are three cameras and approximately 47 million people watching us right now, here really isn't the place to kiss and tell. So come on, let's book."

She grabbed his arm and they started to run again. Though Joanna was tanned and lean she was not an especially athletic girl, but the rush of adrenaline that was surging through her wiry body was propelling her forward. She had it all mapped out, she knew exactly what to do because she'd had better preparation for this than any of the others and ....

A figure leapt from behind a bush. Joanna raised her balled fist to strike. Tulista Patel (Girl #1) fell backwards her hands raised in front of her to shield herself from the blow.

"Tulista is that you?" Joanna breathed a sigh of relief. Tulista lowered her arms and looked up; her cheeks were streaked with tears and smudged mascara but she too was calmed by the discovery of who her supposed attackers really were.

"I've been so frightened, I...I..." She trailed off, her eyes beginning to water again.

Joanna offered her hand.

"Come with us." She said caringly "we won't hurt you I promise and I've already got an idea...."

But she didn't have to continue. Tulista had grabbed her hand and moments later the trio were rushing towards the Northern quarter of the island, Joanna at the centre of the three, holding other twos' hands to ensure they kept up with her speedy pace.

* * *

Within HQ the fear amongst the students had subsided to an extent, now replaced by a sour cocktail of boredom and apprehension. The plump and (previously) cheerful Anthony Stapleton (Boy #6) had departed, followed by Liz Dunn (Girl #6) who'd brazenly sashayed out of the classroom with typical brio. Jeremy Callaghan (Boy #7) had made a half-hearted attempt at simulating an indifferent attitude (it had failed dismally due to his obvious quivering) whilst Nicole Colville (Girl #7), always wanting to have the last word, had declared upon reaching the end of the corridor "You're all sick, disgusting fuckwits – you do know that don't you?"

Mr. Samuels seemed positively bored rigid by the endless role call, his voice droning on, completely apathetic to the gravity of the situation.

"Boy #8: Ben Ackart."

Ben took one final look at Nate with his luminous blue eyes. Regardless of whether he survived the game or not, he was aware that this would in all probability be his one opportunity to say goodbye. He furtively kissed Nate's forehead (Fergal Mills cringed – but everybody else was none the wiser) and promptly grabbed his rucksack and got to his feet.

"Hurry up Benny." Mr. Samuels's voice had resumed its revoltingly jovial manner. Ben rolled his eyes and crossed the threshold towards the corridor. But once Ben had got to the door frame that led on into the corridor, Mr. Samuels spoke again:

"There's an abundance of other boys to kiss (all of whom are still alive) and there's a sizeable amount of time to do so too – so there's no need to feel dejected really."

Mr. Samuels reeled and cried out as a large (and impressively aimed) globule of spit struck him squarely in his left eye. It took a moment for him to do away with the gooey compound of phlegm and saliva, by which time Ben (never one to face the repercussions his actions wrought) had fled the building. Sanderson and Adair were bent double with mirth. Mr. Samuels snarled; he wouldn't have had Ben killed (he was in deep enough shit already for the deaths of Nate and Arabella and had no desire to aggravate the administrative bureaucrats even further), maybe just broken his legs or something that rendered him completely ineffectual.

"Girl #8: Cassandra Douglas – get out of the building in 30 seconds or I will personally bisect you and force your boyfriend to consume your fallopian tubes!"

* * *

There were many thoughts that should have flooded Ben's mind as he ran from the HQ. Memories of past times spent with Nate, tactics for the game he could not avoid playing and suspicions that his collar might be detonated in retaliation for his act of insubordination, should have all enveloped his psyche. Instead all he saw was darkness as he stumbled forward, whilst the opening lyrics of Jefferson Airplane's 'Somebody to Love' repeated themselves over and over again inside his head.

_When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you **dies**!_

Ben lurched nearer towards the forest.

_Don't you want somebody to love_?

A thunderous bang emanated from the bushes on Ben's left.

_Don't you need somebody to love?_

Ben sensed a searing pain in his left shoulder, like a razor being slashed against bare skin, in a panic he started to scamper away.

_Wouldn't you love somebody to love?_

Another shot was fired and Ben began to move faster through the dense shrubbery of the forest; his vision now blurred as he felt the warm trickle of blood ooze from his throbbing shoulder.

_You'd better find somebody to love! _

His foot caught on a bramble and he plunged forward. His face collided with a rock as hit the ground, but he was too exhausted to screech in pain. He looked up groggily; though his sight was distorted he saw the figure of a boy similar in appearance to himself standing before him. The boy waved and gave an erudite smile. Ben blacked out.

* * *

Tian Berkley (Boy #1) lowered his SPAS 12 pump action Shotgun. To describe his marksmanship as appalling would have been an understatement; having read the comprehensive manual that detailed the proper technique with which to use the shotgun, he had spied Ben coming into sight. Keen to have a little target practice, Tian had automatically taken aim at his disorientated schoolmate. By all accounts, Ben should have been an easy kill– he was swaying from side to side as though inebriated – but Tian discovered that he was severely in need of firearms training, as he had not yet adapted to the Shotgun's vicious recoil. The first shot had grazed Ben's shoulder whilst the second had missed entirely – Tian was left shamefaced by the whole ordeal. Tian started to muse over whether he should pursue Ben into the forest and finish him off, but then Fergal Mills (Boy #9) trudged out onto the gravel.

"Over 'ere mate!" Tian shouted in his deep, booming voice.

* * *

Laura Parsons (Girl #9) sullenly left the classroom. It was rare that she was anything other than dour in conduct however, so this was not much of a shift in personality.

Mr. Samuels was still seething from the incident with Ben Ackart (he'd been downright embittered upon ascertaining that the shotgun wounds had not killed his new teenage nemesis), and the remaining pupils knew better than to squabble with him and exited as swiftly and as peacefully as they could.

Diego Paredes (Boy #10) wondered what madness had bound his parents to move from the safe (though economically destitute) Spain to the hazardous Britain as he left the HQ (he too chose the pathway rather than the forest).

Jewel Siu Tung (Girl #10) and Jun Ishibashi (Girl # 12) had both lived in Japan at the time the government initiated its 'purges' of the youth (via the BR act) and were thus arguably better equipped to deal with the emotional strain than the others, having lived in a climate of paranoia and fear. However though the girls had much in common they differed in two respects; firstly their goals within the game. Jun was certain of what to do whilst Jewel was indecisive. Secondly they both selected different routes after leaving the building; Jun (always a keen adventurer) chose the rugged mystery of the forest whilst Jewel decided upon the relative 'safety' of the path.

Christopher Wendell (Boy #11) and Anne Priestly (Girl #11) had low-key departures, much like Clara Beauchamp (Girl #13) and Saul Emerson (Boy #13) who left with an equal paucity of fanfare.

David Colville (Boy #12) by contrast was considerably more motivated; he knew that he needed to save from harm the two most important girls in his life (his sister and girlfriend), though was unsure of what extremes he would go to in order for this to be achieved.

Phil Argyle (Boy #15) and Sylvie Becker (Girl #15) were both anxious when they left headquarters to be reunited with their respective cliques; they never had been comfortable with the notion of individualism.

However it was Frankie Almond Smith (Girl #14) and Brendan Gilchrist (Boy #14), who provided the post-Ackart fireworks. Brendan (in a vague emulation of Ben) spat at the feet of the soldier who handed him his pack – receiving a kick in the shins as retribution – whilst Frankie gave Sanderson the middle finger following his overt ogling of her body (before blowing her a kiss for good measure), she was luckier in that there were no reprisals for her deeds.

Finally, after a long yawn, Mr. Samuels read off the last name.

"Technically Nate Benedict should be Boy #16, but in view of the fact that he is no longer with us, it had better be dearest Krisha Patel (AKA Girl #16) who goes."

* * *

The doors slid shut behind Krisha with a muted thud. She looked around. The area was now completely deserted; the other pupils having joined with their friends or gone at it alone.

There was no need to start running yet. She opened her bag and carefully removed the metallic silver case containing her weapon. A 9mm machine gun, though unlucky in number she was definitely not lacking in firepower. She held the gun tightly in her hands as she began to traverse the path that led westwards.

She'd always been a person of morals and values, but here the rules she had been taught to pay so much respect to had been obliterated and thus she was willing to make exceptions to her own ethical code. If anyone tried to hurt her, she'd kill them and if any person was successful in injuring her sister, she'd make sure their death was agonising.

30 Students Remain.


	4. Hour 2: 30 Students Remain

Day 1 1:03 AM

In times of strife and discord, people often gravitate towards those who project self-belief and apathy to the weightiness of their current situation, hoping that these confident individuals will provide help and solace in a time of need.

Joanna Simpson (Girl #5) was one such person. In school, she fulfilled the unofficial role of surrogate mother to her numerous friends and even provided other classmates with comfort and support in their moments of self-doubt and fear. She was better prepared than anyone else for Battle Royale and knew it.

Tulista (Girl #1) and Simon (Boy #5) were now wheezing with fatigue, having run for over twenty minutes without interruption. Tulista was sure that she had cramp in her right knee and was in considerable pain, but whenever she had tried to broach the subject with Joanna she had been abruptly told to shut up.

Joanna knew they couldn't stop moving; those who hung around the HQ would be the first to bite the dust whilst those who ran off to the furthest ends of the island would be almost guaranteed a larger life-span. She'd analysed the map in the classroom, trying to distinguish which buildings would provide the best sanctuary, whilst which would be susceptible to an easy attack. The infirmary was out of the question; most of the students who decided to take shelter would elect the infirmary to be their lair because of the wealth of medical supplies it contained. Therefore a large number of pupils were likely to congregate there and a blood-bath would invariably ensue. Joanna wasn't willing to take unnecessary risks, because she - like everyone else in the game - valued her life above all else. The cottage was too weakly fortified to be used, and many of the other buildings suffered the same flaw or were too close in location to the HQ. However the apartment block at the northern peninsular was (in the immortal words of Goldilocks) 'just right'.

"I can't run much further, I think my legs are going to give way any minute!" moaned Tulista (for the ninth time during the journey).

"It's just another hundred yards or so – and keep your voice down, we don't want to draw any attention to ourselves!" whispered an increasingly irascible Joanna.

"No, I agree with Tulista. Joanna we can't keep this pace up and besides, at the speed we've been running it's hardly likely that anyone will have caught up with us." Simon countered; despite his athletic prowess on the soccer pitch he'd never been much of a long distance runner.

"Fine," said Joanna through gritted teeth, "we'll slow down,"

The apartment block was an unspectacular three-storey red brick house, surrounded by an imposing looking six-foot high metal fence. Joanna privately chastised herself for expecting the building to be of similar proportions to a vast American duplex. The three of them sheepishly approached the gate, each failing to hide their nervousness. There was a solitary key in the gate's well-oiled lock. Joanna gave (for the first time) a wide grin.

"Well at least they're sticking by the 'finder's, keeper's' policy." She said, receiving a pair of befuddled looks from Simon and Tulista as a result.

Seeing their confusion Joanna elaborated; "I'll explain when we get inside."

* * *

But she did not explain. At least not immediately; first there were other chores to be done. Though the fence would be hard to ascend, Joanna nonetheless insisted they barricade up the ground floor apartment's windows with wood as a precaution in case anybody somehow did. Regrettably they didn't have the tools to manage this properly though, so they simply had make do with pushing wooden cabinets against the windows and toppling bookcases against the front and back doors, in the hope that this would block an intruder from entering. Following their raid of the three apartments for food (only a limited quantity was found), they took their looted spoils to the flat on the topmost floor. They settled themselves on the moderately comfy armchairs in the sparsely furnished living room; Simon decided it was time to speak up, mild irritation detectable in his voice when he did so:

"Ok Joanna, care to tell us why we're here and what you intend to do?"

Joanna was sifting through the objects within her school rucksack; she appeared unperturbed by the question and didn't divert her attention away from the search.

"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies – just hang on a sec, this'll take me a moment." She answered crisply, finally finding the three items she had been hunting for: her pencil case, a packet of tissues and a pad of writing paper (Joanna had actually been expecting to do work on this Geography field trip – and was secretly rather looking forward to it).

She beckoned them to come and sit on the floor. Joanna put a finger to her lips, indicating that it was necessary for the mystified Tulista and Simon to be silent. She retrieved a fountain pen from her pencil case and began to write on the block of paper in her self-consciously stylish handwriting. Joanna pushed the sheet of paper towards her intrigued allies.

_Firstly, you must do **exactly** what I say – got it?_

Tulista nodded vigorously, Simon seemed less convinced though he too consented to her terms of agreement by giving a thumb up.

Ok then – now take a tissue

* * *

Mr. Samuels's eyes ran idly up and down the large screens of data that were erected on the otherwise bare walls of the HQ. Some of the rather tedious ones monitored the students' location and heart rate, but it was the display that recounted which of the students had the best odds to win (and which were the likeliest to be the next to go) that was generating the most interest amongst the troops. These results were based solely upon the (unexpectedly plentiful) bets placed by the British public, but already many of the soldiers were regarding the statistics as reliable testimony. In regards to who was already being touted as the most probable victor, it was definitely a 'girls on top' scenario. Joanna Simpson (Girl #5) was atop the list, closely followed by Krisha Patel (Girl #16) whilst Tian Berkley (Boy #1) came in at number three (though Adair reassured the others that once Tian had perfected his shooting skills, he'd blow the competition away with ease – quite literally). Of the 'who will be next to go' list, only Ben Ackart (Boy #8) had drawn any substantial votes (much to be Mr. Samuels gratification), though Clara Beauchamp's (Girl #13) fortunes were also not reckoned to be good.

Mr. Samuels sunk down in his desk chair; he had endless paperwork to complete (chiefly to do with the deaths of Nate and Arabella) and was not in the mood to participate in the haphazard gambling of his guards. Besides, he'd already made his choice – and was feeling very optimistic about that person's chances.

* * *

"The tissues now serve a dual purpose, firstly they prevent the collar from chaffing against your neck and secondly they prevent the BR overseers from hearing our conversations, by covering the collar's microphone."

Following Joanna's instruction, the three of them had folded their tissues and (after feeling for the microphone's gauze on the reverse side of the collar) inserted them as a buffer between the front of their necks and their astringent collars.

"How do you know there are microphones hidden in the collar?" asked a puzzled (but impressed) Tulista.

"An educated guess: I was fairly certain about it when Mr. Samuels informed me that weren't any cameras in the buildings," seeing that neither Tulista nor Simon understood, she continued, "it's illegal for them to have cameras in the buildings because it violates the privacy laws as we're under the age of 18. However unless they want to lose out on viewers, they have to somehow communicate what takes place behind these walls– thus we have the hidden microphones, which can bypass the privacy laws because it's only audio, not visual."

"Privacy laws? You're telling me that it's perfectly permissible for audiences to watch us slaughter each other out in the open air but not behind closed doors?" Simon asked, rather sceptical of the accurateness of Joanna's reasoning.

"No, it's worse. It's not the killing inside a building that they're prohibited from showing, it's for other reasons that they can't televise what goes on."

"Such as?" Tulista interjected.

"Well since we might go the toilet, shower, have sex or masturbate, theoretically it could be construed as child pornography and that would mean they couldn't broadcast, with the consequence that they don't make any money."

"So why not simply have the HQ and not bother with any other buildings?" suggested Tulista.

"Again the law," Joanna replied with a wry smile, "they're legally bound to give us accommodation, if they don't the Battle Royale can't take place, period."

"Ok, Ok, but why bother with the microphones in the collars when you can just have the buildings bugged. Or are the microphones in the collars the only ones on the island? I mean are the cameras outside video only?" Simon inquired.

For the first time in the game, Joanna bit her lip and looked hesitant. "No, the cameras certainly have their own audio – I saw the boom mikes on some of them as we passed – but I'm pretty sure they haven't bugged the place. It would be financially costly and the acoustics wouldn't be as good." Simon was still looking at her expectantly and she felt obliged to go on, "Plus if there was a gunfight, the equipment could be damaged beyond repair."

Simon still appeared dissatisfied with Joanna's explanation. She inwardly sighed; she wasn't used to people questioning or doubting her, usually she was seen a paragon of good-sense and wisdom whose advice was greatly appreciated.

"What is it Simon? I can tell you're still concerned about something." Tulista asked, with characteristic gentleness.

Aside from Simon's increasing guilt at having left Ben to fend for himself (he had an awful gut-feeling that the gunshot they'd heard earlier had struck his friend), he was at a loss as to how Joanna could be so legitimately knowledgeable about Battle Royale.

"Joanna, how come you know all this?" he asked bluntly.

Joanna rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Hon, I lived in America until a year ago. You know the self help books over here in the UK? Well in the United Sates an anonymous 'BR insider' published his own guide to success within the program and made a colossal sum of money out of it (and then died of a heroin overdose). I suppose it's the greatest demonstration of the decline of western civilisation: self-help guides used to teach you how to love yourself and now they school your kids in the best ways of disembowelling their friends – sick huh? But anyway, my parents insisted I watched the Battle Royale that took place every six months (until I started to get nightmares) and that I read the book to help me if I ever found myself embroiled in this living hell. It didn't tell me everything but it told me enough."

"Like that 'finder's keeper's' thing you were talking about – what is that by the way?" Tulista noted, smiling for the first time and perking up considerably.

"It basically means that there is one key for each building, found in the lock of the entrance (or the gates in our case). The said key opens every door within the building, because they've changed all the locks so that it fits each of them."

Simon had been deep in thought for the thirty seconds prior to his decision to explicate more of his misgivings about Joanna. He spoke again, Joanna markedly flinching as he did so:

"The book you read was to do with the American Battle Royale. What's to say that the British one doesn't differ extensively?"

"Oh for fuck's sake Simon, stop whinging! The British Battle Royale is without a doubt styled after its trans-Atlantic counterpart. I mean come on; Britain's practically the 51st state of America anyway!" Joanna replied angrily.

"It's true," chimed in Tulista, "still at least we're safe here."

"For now," corrected Joanna, "the viewers have a habit of voting for danger zones which contain constructions that are inhabited by students who are just pissing about and not doing anything of interest."

There was an uncomfortable pause. Joanna scowled at the (still) unmoved Simon, the tension was palpable and Tulista was starting to worry.

"Why don't we see what weapons we've been assigned?" She suggested, just a little too cheery to be credible.

Joanna hadn't permitted them to look inside their duffel bags en route to the apartments (it would only have slowed them down) and upon arriving they had busied themselves with blockading themselves in, completely forgetting to check what artillery (if any) they had been given. Each of the three picked up their bag from wherever in the living room they had dumped it and reformed their circle on the floor.

Simon went first ("It's just like Christmas – only without the snow or the fat man getting stuck in the chimney" he laughed), removing a lock-pick from its metal case (along with its all-inclusive manual).

"Well if I ever get out of this thing alive, at least I know I have a future career in burglary." He mused dryly.

Tulista was luckier (if that is the appropriate word given the circumstances) uncovering a machete and a manual that elucidated the best ways to attack with it ("If at all possible," she read aloud, "lunge for the throat - bit difficult considering everybody's wearing a collar – or the heart. Charming, I feel better already." She sarcastically grumbled)

But it was Joanna who received the plum weapon: an M870 shotgun. Not as powerful as the twelve gauge perhaps; but only a fool would have wanted to take her on at close range.

"Well I've always been anti-NRA, but I guess that I'll just have to adapt and change those rules of mine, given the current state of affairs." the shotgun's proud new owner joked. Joanna began to tentatively examine her weapon with a strangely maternal affection; she speculated she was probably one of the best armed people on the island.

"I think it's time we went and got some sleep." Stated Simon, unmistakably disenchanted by his rather sub-standard 'weapon'.

"First we have to allot guard duties." Joanna politely scolded.

"Fuck that – I'm tired and need some sleep." Simon responded wearily.

"You get to use the shotgun." Joanna continued, as Simon stood up and plodded away towards the door.

"On second thoughts, I recant that last statement – count me in." he said, turning around and returning to where Joanna pertly sat.

She smiled. She wasn't worried about letting the others borrow the Shotgun – it wasn't even loaded.

30 Students Remain.


	5. Hour 3: 30 Students Remain

Day 1 2:04 AM

There was something strangely romantic about the way the stars in the sky gleamed brilliantly in the stillness of the night. In view of the fact that at daybreak, students would brawl, maim and kill one another, it seemed perversely inappropriate. This bitter irony was not lost on Jewel Siu Tung (Girl #10) as she strolled aimlessly down the western pathway, carelessly swing the nunchaku she had been provided with and humming the melodies of several of her favourite pop tunes. She wasn't sure of how to actually use her weapon (she hadn't bothered to read the manual) and even if she had, it was unlikely she could have put up much of a fight against an attacker, being so dazed and giddy with confusion. This disagreeable sensation was similar to the drunken haze she had found herself in on the occasion she had consumed too many Bacardi breezers at Frankie's 16th birthday party, and copiously vomited when she returned home later.

Amidst her confusion she could only focus her mind on one thing: boys. It was not that she pined for the affection of any of them, quite the contrary; she intensely hated almost all of them, but now realised that the emotional bridges she had burnt in that respect might come back to haunt her in this deadly game. Two potential suitors had been spurned by her (one quite cruelly so) and Jewel worried as to whether either of them would try to avenge their wounded pride; the rules were different here and if anyone had a score to settle, they would be perfectly able to do so.

It was her father's fault. She vividly remembered how he used to mercilessly beat her mother when they had lived in Japan, always taking his pent-up aggression out on her when he returned home from a stressful day at work. He would take her out onto the balcony of their apartment, where they would be hidden by the large surrounding trees, and repeatedly hit her with a kitchen rolling-pin. Jewel's mother never cried out. To scream would have alerted the neighbour's attention, maybe even resulted in them learning of what torment her husband was putting her through and that would not be acceptable; she would have brought shame upon herself (and the family) by revealing what was happening and the law would have offered her little security from her spouse. So she suffered mutely, whilst Jewel sat at the top of the staircase, muffling her sobs by burying her face in the fur of her teddy bear (her father would never lay a finger on her, but he would shout loudly or even lock her in her room if she angered him). Mrs. Siu Tung would later cover her bruises with makeup, never discussing what had happened with anybody, least of all her daughter.

But then the 'Battle Royale' program was introduced. Mr. Siu Tung, fearing for the welfare of his child, chose to immigrate to Britain with his wife and daughter (in the brief period before Japan blocked its citizens from leaving the country). It seemed that even the darkest of clouds had a silver lining: discovering the western freedoms for women that Japan had denied her, Mrs. Siu Tung filed for divorce on grounds of domestic abuse. After a protracted legal battle, she obtained not only a restraining order on her husband but also sole custody of Jewel (though later, when the BNP came to power and started to favour men above women, Mr. Siu Tung was granted access to his daughter on Saturdays) and set about healing the emotional (and physical) wounds that her husband had inflicted upon her. However whilst her mother progressively recuperated, Jewel began to distrust and even fear the opposite sex, abhorring the idea that she would eventually be expected to marry (like a _proper_ Japanese woman) and even flirted with the idea of lesbianism as an excuse to avoid it (she harboured no attraction to members of her own gender – she considered same sex desires to be distasteful and unnatural – but was desperate to evade marriage).

Suspecting her daughter's inexplicable asexuality, Mrs. Siu Tung selected Bray Wood to be Jewel's school once she reached puberty, principally because it was coeducational and professed to 'create unity and understanding between the sexes'. Jewel was a natural beauty and at Bray Wood, that was all a girl needed. By default her attractiveness rendered her eligible to be a member of either of her year's two most exclusive (and prestigious) cliques; dubbed the 'Bitches' (Frankie Almond Smith's posse) and the 'Beauties' (Nicole Colville's sect). These sobriquets were not strictly fair, both groups were comprised of attractive females and both were prone to catty behaviour; however the perception remained that Frankie's group were the truly mean ones (due, in no small part, to the antics of Liz Dunn). There was a covert warfare between these two factions (heaven help anybody who strayed into the crossfire), as each of them vied for the most power in Bray Wood (this power was measured by which clique had the greater influence over their male peers), whilst they callously trampled over 'lesser' victims in the process. Deciding it was better to be in the loophole than out, Jewel chose to align herself with the 'Bitches', a move she was now regretting, as though she had gained security via popularity she lacked any true friends who could be relied upon.

And then there was Phil Argyle. She shivered at the mere thought of him; what began as a series of salacious text messages (who had given him her phone number? Probably Liz – always a treacherous bitch) had escalated into borderline sexual harassment as he continually made attempts to insinuate himself into her affections (with little skill to say the least). The culmination of these efforts came at the school disco, where a very drunk Phil (alcohol was prohibited at these dances, but Tian Berkley had succeeded in smuggling some in nonetheless) made an ill-fated attempt to grope Jewel's chest. Jewel's response was to knee him in the groin and then punch him in the face (consequently breaking his nose), and nearly getting herself expelled because of it (ultimately though, she only received several detentions as punishment).

Jewel was not in the habit of reacting violently when a boy showed interest in her (quite the opposite – such attention boosted her ceaselessly flagging level of self-esteem), but there was something about Phil Argyle that truly made her skin crawl. He was squat and stocky, with a face that bore a strong resemblance to a slab of mouldy cheese, whilst a fine layer of shaved hair covered his head (not quite a skinhead – that wasn't permitted at Bray Wood – but about as close as you could feasibly get) and his general appearance was that of an ape crossed with a Neo-Nazi. Regrettably his thuggish exterior did not conceal a sweet nature; it was in fact completely representational of his personality. Jewel loathed him, but she had an unpleasant suspicion that the feeling was now mutual.

She walked steadily further down the path, on either side there was the dark mystery of the forest, the two rows of dense green foliage indistinguishable from each other. There was a rustling of bushes to her left. She raised her nunchaku and approached, expecting it to just be a deer or some other form of native wildlife. The rustling stopped, Jewel stood still and breathed a sigh of relief. Behind her, there was the crunching of gravel underfoot. She turned around and looked straight into the eyes of the leering Phil Argyle (Boy # 15).

"Hello poppet." He sneered malevolently.

Jewel forcefully swung her nunchaku at his head. There was a satisfying crack as the metal collided with his skull, he yelled and clutched his hands to the area of pain whilst Jewel turned on her heel and prepared to run back the way she came. However after she had only taken a few paces forward, Fergal Mills (Boy #9) and Tian Berkley (Boy #1) leapt from the bushes, each grabbing one of her shoulders and shoving her onto the ground. Tian pressed down on her left shoulder (Fergal took her right) and placed his hand over her mouth to gag her. She frantically kicked her legs in a flurry of terror and tried to bite Tian's hand, but to no avail.

Phil eased himself onto Jewel's lap, pressuring her legs into submission (Phil was not the lightest of people) and comfortably seating himself on her pelvis. He giggled; it was a high pitched, throaty guffaw that made Jewel's stomach churn. She made an effort to struggle, but found it almost impossible to move.

"Now then Jewel, behave like a good girl. After all that's what you like to think you are isn't it? You hang around with a pack of sluts but you still won't let anybody touch you, you get so high and mighty, act so superior, thinking that I'm not worthy of your affections don't you, you bitch?" hissed Phil as he leaned forward.

Phil's large, cumbersome hands reached forward towards her school blouse. She was dazzlingly beautiful, even more so than Frankie or Nicole, as her attractiveness came from a natural grace and poise rather than through the appliance of plentiful amounts of cosmetics. His fingers trembled with excitement as he unhurriedly started to delicately undo her school blouse's buttons.

"Don't take too long, man!" said Fergal Mills, who then leant forward and whispered lasciviously in Jewel's ear, "It'll be my turn next."

Jewel writhed desperately and tried to shout as Phil finally succeeded in opening her blouse.

"Stop fucking moving!" snarled Phil, raising his right hand to slap her.

Phil shrieked as the bullet passed through his open palm, tiny granules of flesh scattering across Jewel's chest, whilst the blood started to seep down his arm. Phil (rather foolishly) stood up, not only making himself an easier target for the shooter but also relinquishing his weight on Jewel, and as Fergal and Tian lunged towards their packs to retrieve their weapons, Jewel now was left completely unattended.

"You fucking pig!" she spat at Phil.

She raised her left leg and thrust her stiletto heel into Phil's crotch, quickly getting to her feet and kneeing him in the jaw as he keeled forward in agony. A shout emanated from the forest on the left side of the path

"RUN! RUN! GET AWAY! QUICK, GO!"

Jewel didn't need encouragement; she sprinted with all her might down the pathway (wishing that she'd not worn her stilettos, which severely impaired her speed), feeling the rush of adrenaline surge through her as she hurried forward. Her mind was askew with disorientation and fear; it was a male voice she'd heard, but whose? Jewel winced as she heard more gunfire and a single, sharp scream.

She gulped; suddenly realising who her doomed saviour probably was.

* * *

He hadn't intended to shadow her for the whole game, just the first few hours when things would be at their most dangerous and Jewel was liable to feel very frightened. Upon leaving the HQ, he'd hidden in the bushes and waited for her to leave, running through the forest to keep her in sight but to make sure he was out of her vision. He'd only wanted to protect her; his Berretta M92F pistol was considered by him to be perfectly adequate for this task and he didn't (in theory) have any qualms about harming anybody who attacked her.

She was so radiantly gorgeous, even her little idiosyncrasies had a certain charm and her smile was endearing but also pleasingly genuine (a novelty amongst the female elite of Bray Wood). He was spellbound from the moment he laid eyes one her. Always shy and diffident in manner, he was nervous about approaching her (something he certainly wouldn't attempt when she was surrounded by all those anorexic harpies she regarded as her 'friends'), and for three years kept his burgeoning passion for her to himself.

But eventually he couldn't wait any longer, and on that fateful Wednesday afternoon he'd ambled over to her in the corridor of Science block (she was alone) and politely expressed his feelings for her. After hearing them, her expression was one of shock and mild amusement; he blushed and turned away to retreat back to his study, but then felt her take his hand in hers' and bring him back to face her.

"You're very sweet," she quietly informed him, "but I'm not really interested in you I'm afraid, but thank you for...well, it was brave of you to tell me how you felt, so...thanks, I guess."

She grinned kindly and walked away towards the chemistry laboratory. As the other students bustled past him, he remained standing completely motionless, going over every word she had spoken and committing them to memory. From then on Jewel had made a point of being pleasant to him when ever he was in her vicinity; little things like simply smiling or enquiring about how he was finding the schoolwork. These social niceties were savoured by him, each of them a little treasure in their own right, a gesture that meant the world to him and would never be forgotten. He didn't delude himself that Jewel felt anything for him other than, perhaps, a slight fondness for his harmlessness and his rather nerdy quirks but he nevertheless was resolute that he would protect her (at least initially).

It was harder than he imagined though; he'd been so shocked when he saw those three brutes force her to the ground and attempt to violate her, he'd hesitated, unsure of how to act and concerned about the accuracy of his aim; but then Phil had raised his hand, clearly about to hit her. He pulled the trigger.

* * *

Tian Berkley thumped Fei Yan (Boy #2) twice in the gut. There had been a tussle and a fair amount of shooting but now Fergal Mills was holding the hapless Fei up by his shoulders, whilst Tian (and Phil intermittently) pummelled him in the chest. After searching through his own rucksack, Tian had located a rather old (and unpleasantly odorous) sock, which Phil now had tied around his wounded hand. The pain was almost unbearable; though fortunately he was left handed and thus could still use the pistol that Fei had been carrying (his provided weapon had been a sickle – average at best, but with his wound it would now also be very unwieldy to use).

Fei was a brutalised mess. His face was a mask of bruises and lacerations (from where Tian and Phil's nails had torn his skin), his bottom lip had been cut by the ring Tian wore on his index finger and his glasses had been smashed, meaning his vision was poor.

"Can we please just do something with him?" moaned Fergal. Fergal was the biggest of the three (no mean feat; Tian wasn't exactly what you'd call petite) and had his hair spiked up with the aid of a particularly powerful brand of hair gel. He was of Irish descent and had exceptional pride in his heritage (despite living in England for almost the entire duration of his life, he still feigned a faint Irish brogue) and was rumoured (inaccurately) to be a supporter of the IRA (this rumour sprung from the fact that he was an ardent nationalist and was suspect to reacting violently if anyone made a slur against his 'homeland').

"You know, in the middle east the punishment for theft is the removal of your hand. Now, one could argue that you've just stolen something from Phil, in view of the fact he now has limited use of his right hand, and hence we could claim moral justification for going with the old biblical decree of 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'. So if you don't mind, I think I'll do the honours." Tian said.

Fergal slammed Fei face down onto the ground, nearly giving him a concussion as a result. Tian grabbed Fei's right arm and chuckled.

"Fergal, mind if I borrow your axe?" he asked.

Fergal nonchalantly shook his head and handed Tian the fire axe he had been provided with. Tian placed his foot on Fei's wrist and raised the axe. Fei felt so deadened from the repeated beatings he had received, he could only whimper in protest. Tian brought the axe down with a chilling thump.

* * *

Even though she was quite a long distance away by now, Jewel nevertheless heard the bloodcurdling screech that came from the forest. She fought back her tears, it was almost certainly Fei Yan who had saved her and she was convinced it was his scream she'd heard. But what was she to do? She only had a nunchaku as a weapon, could she fend them off if she returned? Was Fei even alive anymore? It was all too awful to contemplate. However, if it was true that he'd sacrificed his life to save hers, then she felt she must honour Fei's wishes by preserving her life for as long as possible. With a moderate amount of reluctance, she sped off in the direction she was headed and left Fei to face his gruesome fate.

* * *

Fergal had a rather queasy feeling in his stomach. It had taken three strikes with the axe to sever Fei's hand (Fei had almost passed out from the pain) and now all that remained was a bloody stump at the end of his arm.

"OK, I get to finish him off," said Phil, rising from the log he had been sitting on, "Fergal, hold him up again."

"I don't take orders from anybody, least of all _you_." Fergal snapped, snatching his axe back from Tian.

"What's that supposed to mean?" retorted Phil.

"I pride myself in not listening to idiots, even if they are my friends."

"You fucking twat." Phil said quietly.

"Ok, that's enough." Tian interjected, now standing between them, "I'll hold him up. You gonna use the sickle?"

"Thought I might as well, you know, seems a waste not to use it once."

"Why won't you be using it again?" asked Fergal.

"Well...I'll be taking the Beretta won't I?"

"Hey, what gives? Why does he get the Beretta? That means I'll be stuck with this crap axe whilst you two hold all the real firepower – what with Tian having that Shotgun!" Fergal loudly complained.

"You can have the sickle too." Phil weakly offered.

"Look," Tian began, "whether you like it or not, Phil's right hand is as good as useless, therefore he needs to get the Beretta. We'll get you some better weapons later, but for now it would be really much better if we just tried to get along and not bitch constantly. Agreed?"

Fergal nodded grudgingly. Tian grabbed the nearly comatose Fei by the armpits and raised him to his feet, where he steadily held him. Phil held the sickle in his left hand and approached. Fei awakened from his pain-induced stupor to see the moon's reflection in the polished metal of the blade, he screamed. Phil raised the sickle and drove it into Fei's neck (disappointed to see it did not pass all the way through), severing several of his major arteries and creating a wide gash on his neckline. Tian released his grip on Fei; he fell to the ground like a rag doll, the sickle still embedded in his neck. Phil stood stock still and stared disbelievingly at the corpse. He looked at Tian, who beamed cheerfully.

"Welcome to hell my friend." He said.

29 Students Remain


	6. Hour 4: 29 Students Remain

Day 1 3:01 AM

It would have come as little surprise to anyone who knew her, but Frankie Almond Smith (Girl # 14 – no one was absolutely sure whether 'Almond Smith' was a double barrelled surname or if 'Almond' was simply her middle name. Either way, she never deigned to answer this question if anybody was brave enough to ask) was hopelessly lost, trundling across one of the island's many fields without a clue as to where she was. This was primarily due to the fact that during Bray Wood's 'woodland orienteering activities' (which were compulsory – otherwise she'd have skipped them and gone into town to get a manicure), Frankie had always insisted that Liz do all the map reading, whilst she just sulked and complained about the weather and thus had never really acquired the skills the course had aimed to teach.

She examined the contents of her bag. It seemed that not only were the Battle Royale administrators deeply sick, but they were also extremely stingy; having provided only 3 bread rolls and three small bottles of water to sustain the students for the three days, assuming any of them lasted that long. Frankie grimaced when she saw what her provisions consisted of, presupposing that the intention was to give the students paltry food supplies so as to provide a further incentive to kill each other in order to gain more rations.

Frankie took a few steps forward with her elegantly long legs. She was tall and slim (perhaps a little _too_ slim; her breasts had an oddly deflated look) and she maintained her physique not by rigorous exercise - she was far too lazy for that - but by self-imposed bulimia. Only Liz knew of this affliction, having regularly accompanied Frankie to the toilets after lunch, whilst Frankie was determined to keep quiet about it, having no intention of getting counselling or therapy of any kind. She enjoyed the jealousy she incurred in the other female students; seeing the way they envied her supposed ability to eat whatever she wanted and however much she wanted, without ever gaining a pound of weight. Of course it was all an illusion, they'd never seen the way she choked and spluttered over the toilet, desperately trying to regurgitate her food as quickly - and painlessly - as possible.

Popularity wasn't a given thing at Bray Wood; once achieved it took great effort to sustain and Frankie knew that she would need to fight dirty for this to be accomplished. Her height, body shape, attractive countenance, waist length blonde hair and sharp wit made her a plausible candidate for the school's ruling queen bee, but there would always be challengers trying to commandeer her position and hence it was necessary to ferret out her oppositions' weaknesses and exploit them to bring about their downfall. Fortunately as of yet, few reputations had been tarnished by the social machinations of Frankie, partly because she was dependent upon another person to conceive of an effective smear campaign for her chosen target. That individual was none other than Liz Dunn (Girl #6), a young woman who found Frankie's constant social manoeuvring rather tiresome and usually couldn't be bothered to assist her in her scheming.

Liz was, theoretically, perhaps proof that supermodel good looks weren't vital for social power. She was rather small in stature, her body being of the voluptuous variety rather than the preferential waif-like twig – though Liz did have a set of magnificently well shaped breasts - whilst her round face, slightly sunken brown eyes and short black hair, all added further weight to other peoples' belief that her physical attributes resulted in her appearance being nothing more than _plain_. But at Bray wood things were not necessarily so simply beauty-fixated: if you were a member of the female species and wanted to exist at Bray Wood as opposed to being the human equivalent of wallpaper you had to either be a complete bitch or an utter slut. Liz was the epitome of the former, whilst Frankie fulfilled the latter position with gusto and a good level of discretion too. They were as thick as thieves; a knock-out combination who ruled their year with an iron fist and used the freaks, the fat and the fashion failures as their doormat with which they wiped the shit off their feet.

They'd been best friends (if that is the right expression to use; it sounds so innocent and naïve, two terms that one could definitely not apply to either Liz or Frankie) since the age of seven and were thought to be inseparably close, having seen each other through every trial and tribulation their lives had presented them with. Frankie was aware she needed to find her; Liz had always been a more enterprising and pragmatic person than she'd ever be, maybe she'd even formulated a plan to get them off the island by now?

But then she felt the hot rush of her anger and frustration towards Liz, a bubbling, frothing fury that had gradually escalated since they both arrived at Bray Wood and found their friendship becoming ever more superficial as they started to resent each other. It was technically Liz's fault that Frankie was even in the Battle Royale; for the previous two years, Frankie had been in Science set 2 and it was only when Liz doctored her coursework - at Frankie's request - to improve it that she was promoted to be a member of the year's scientific elite. Even at the time Frankie pondered why she had decided to cheat her way to the top; the work load was larger and the topics were more complex, often resulting in her struggling to comprehend the information she was given. But in all truth, Frankie already knew why she had enlisted Liz to forge her coursework; pride.

It wasn't enough that she was beautiful, that she had a coterie of close female companions and a legion of male admirers; she wanted more, but not only that, she also was determined to trump her arch-rival, Nicole Colville. Nicole may not have been tactically adept and hence was never able to successfully usurp Frankie's position as the female sovereign of Bray Wood, but she had soon found Frankie's Achilles heel: her intelligence. Frankie was far from stupid, but Nicole made a point of characterising her to others as a stereotypical blonde airhead because she was in 'inferior academic sets'. Nobody took these jibes seriously; Frankie was clearly a very able student and one who it was inadvisable to anger: she was quick with her mouth and even quicker with her hands, and most realised that Nicole was simply being malicious towards her. However these taunts struck a raw nerve with Frankie, who despite using her looks to fast-track her through life, was anxious that she not be pigeonholed as nothing more than a pretty face.

In an atypically candid moment she had once expressed her fears to Liz (the two would never confide their troubles in anybody but each other):

"I don't want to be judged for my looks, I want people to see beyond that."

"Oh, I suppose that you'd rather have Geoff screw you because he's aroused by your love of Chaucer rather than your tits?" Liz replied venomously, completely bemused as to how anybody so beautiful could have the gall to actually _complain_ about their handsomeness. Seeing that Frankie looked truly hurt by her answer - Frankie showing her pain was an _incredibly _unusual occurrence - Liz put her arm around her and softly said, "I'm sorry Franks; I didn't mean that. But come on – you know what they say about good looks: they're a passport to success."

Frankie laughed humourlessly, a tear conspicuously forming in her eye, "No Liz, it's not a passport, it's a visa. And when it runs out, what are you left with if you don't have a magnetic personality or a brilliant mind?"

"Oh Frankie..."Liz gently commiserated.

Frankie had thought that by fraudulently worming her way into the upper echelons of Bray Wood's intelligentsia, she would be giving herself a better chance in life. Never had she imagined it would indirectly lead to her participating in a game that would probably end her existence!

Geoff.

His name was emblazoned on her heart; sure she was liberal in attitude when it came to sex, but of all her lovers, of which there were fewer in number than you might imagine, he was the only one she had ever formed an emotional attachment with. She berated herself for fleetingly wishing he too had been placed in the Battle with her. She knew she should be thankful that he had been spared this horror - owing to that fact that he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer and thus was in a lower set to her - but despite herself, she still yearned for his company right now.

_But what if he's already watching me? _The thought hit her with the force of a stray bullet. The island was covered in cameras; perhaps everybody in Bray Wood was watching them now on TV – willing their friends to triumph and their enemies to perish. She shivered. The only way to win was to kill, but what would Geoff think of her then? Would he want to be with a girl who would be branded as a heartless and deranged psychopath? Talk about being in Catch 22 – her strongest reason for fighting for victory was to be with Geoff again, but by winning Battle Royale she'd almost certainly repulse and alienate him.

She walked further forward, casting her pale flashlight over the surrounding wheat crops that she casually trampled to the ground as she proceeded. She was approaching the field's edge, which lead off into the forest, when her torch beam illuminated the figure of Liz Dunn, squatting by a tree stump, scribbling some notes on a pad of notepaper. Frankie grinned, but just as she was about to step forwards, she caught sight of the silver pistol that lay by Liz's side, glistening in the whiteness of her torch's solitary ray of light. Frankie stopped, feeling inexplicably hesitant about progressing towards Liz; there was something about her manner that was oddly discomforting. Liz casually looked up from her notebook and unblinkingly met Frankie's concerned gaze.

Within three emotionally painful seconds, Frankie understood the significance of that cold stare. Here, on this island of misery, their friendship counted for nothing; they had been pitted against each other as enemies in a game where death was the only exit available and killing was the one method of point scoring. Liz was clearly intent on becoming a player in this bloodbath. The only apparent remnant of her once strong bond with Frankie, was the way her gaze explicated that she was giving Frankie her first - and last - chance to walk away, maybe to die at the hands of some other student or perhaps to survive a little longer and possibly even confront her later. It was a gesture of goodwill towards Frankie that Liz would not be repeating.

Frankie understood. She turned and began to walk away, too numb with uncertainty to cry. Without Liz's guidance, what was she to do now? Kill others? Should she be 'noble' and take her own life? Her weapon was a stun gun; hardly likely to cause any fatalities and only useable at close range, it could only really serve a purpose if used defensively. The gruesome reality of what she must do loomed ever more clearly in Frankie's mind; the ominous knowledge that it was 'kill or be killed' and that there was nobody she could turn to for assistance.

But she had one weapon that was arguably deadlier than any firearm: her body. Most of Bray Wood's male students were your archetypal horny adolescents, but whilst some had the confidence, not to mention the good looks, to act on their sexual impulses, a fair few bottled up these desires and repressed themselves in that classically British way. Frankie decided to entice her prey with a little showing of flesh (she wasn't going to actually sleep with anybody – she may have been a tart, but she still had standards to uphold), shock them into temporary paralysis with the stun gun and then purloin their weapon. She had no intention of actually slaying anyone until the last moments of the 'game', where that eventuality would be pretty much unavoidable.

Frankie skulked back across the field, compiling a list in her head of possible targets. She was agitated; though she soon had decided which boy would be the subject whom she conferred her feminine charms on, she wondered if he would be gullible enough to fall for them, given the present situation of mass paranoia.

What she really wanted right now was a nice, high quality line of coke. Unfortunately, it was always Liz who carried the narcotics. Great – she was probably going to die and she couldn't even get high just one last time.

* * *

As Frankie slowly faded into the dark cloud of night, Liz returned to her writing. She was drawing - quite literally - a social totem pole, trying to establish where her fellow classmates existed in Bray Wood's hierarchy. Popularity is, to an extent, in the eye of the beholder (not entirely unlike beauty) and hence those who are perceived popular will have greater influence over others and be adulated and possibly even feared. In Battle Royale, in Liz's not particularly humble opinion, popularity could act either for or against a person; as popular individuals might either automatically gain the trust of their fellow students or suffer their previously dormant jealousies.

She glanced at her pistol, remembering with a flush of disappointment the cheap trick the BR admin had played on her. At first sight it seemed like any regular pistol, but it was in fact nothing more than a water pistol. However what truly galled her was not only the fact that they'd had the cheek to include an instruction manual, but that they'd also dared – according to the operating manual's cover - to class this useless toy in weapons' group 3. Still, on the surface it was indistinguishable from a genuine gun, so perhaps she could use it to threaten some of her peers into surrendering their weapons to her. She needed to find some boys who were fundamentally good-natured and would be forgiving of the previous cruelties she'd perpetrated against them; the girls were out of the question, being too astute not to see through her completely. These pathetically humanitarian idiots would be the most vulnerable and the easiest ones for her to enact her schemes upon. The sun wouldn't rise for a few hours, but already Liz sensed an incandescent brightness surfacing on her horizons.

* * *

Sue Cathcart (Girl # 3) tightly squeezed the trigger of her Uzi, pellets of soil leaping into the air and doing a jittery dance as the bullets struck the ground, before the dismembered particles gracelessly fell back down to the desecrated turf. Sue released her finger from the trigger and shouted to the hidden figure in the darkness,

"You take one step forward and the next bullets will be for you, got it?"

"For fuck's sake Sue it's me – it's Jewel," Jewel (Girl # 10) shouted back with a mixture of irritation and fear, "now _please_ let me in!"

Sue squinted at the darkness before saying, "Ok, step forward and let me see if it's really you."

Against her better judgement, Jewel moved forwards towards the window. There were traces of dirt all over her clothes and she was sweating profusely from having run up the steep hill to reach the log cabin.

"Shit, it really is you – Anne, open the door quick!" said Sue, finally lowering her Uzi and staring at Jewel in astonishment.

Anne Priestly (Girl # 11) rose from her chair, Colt 45. Pistol gripped firmly in her hand, and unlocked the cabin's heavy oak front door. Jewel, panting with exhaustion, rushed in and collapsed onto one of the cabin's cushy settees. The large entrance room of the cabin was divided into two sections by a Kitchen counter; the right hand side was furnished with three plush, cream leather sofas, a coffee table and an expensive looking widescreen TV, whilst the left side comprised of two kitchen counters, a few non-functional kitchen appliances, an agar and a circular dining table surrounded by six chairs. To the left of the TV was the room's only door, aside from the entrance, and opened off into the cabin's one corridor. Since their arrival at the cabin, thirty minutes ago, Sue and Anne had been guarding the windows with their weaponry, feeling it would be imprudent to smash up what little furniture there was to try and barricade themselves inside, considering that the region they currently were in could easily become a danger zone in a matter of hours, meaning they'd have to depart at short notice.

"So what happened to you?" asked Anne, though not really out of concern.

"Far too long a story," replied Jewel, "but I now officially want to castrate Phil Argyle."

"That bad huh?" said Sue.

"Worse than you could possibly imagine," Jewel answered, "so what have you two been up to?"

"There are four of us actually," seeing Jewel's surprise Sue elaborated, "Me, Anne, Daisy and Sylvie. We met up after leaving the HQ and headed over here, Anne said it'd be easier to defend because we're on top of a hill and as the building's small there's not much risk of anyone infiltrating it without our knowledge. Plus it's quite comfy."

"So where are Sylvie and Daisy?" Jewel queried. Anne snorted and rolled her eyes contemptuously.

"Well when we arrived here, Sylvie decided, being ever the drama queen, to lock herself in the bathroom and hasn't left since. Daisy is currently trying to coax her out but not with much success." Anne snarled, as she and Sue seated themselves on either side of the fretful Jewel.

"Well what's she doing in there?" asked the nonplussed Jewel.

"I'd bet money she's crying her eyes out." Sue said offhandedly.

"Or she's slitting her wrists, which in view of the fact she's basically dead weight, wouldn't necessarily be such a bad thing." Anne sneered, lighting up a cigarette and taking one long, prolonged puff of it. She was of average height, flat chested and hatchet faced, her countenance was generally surly and her behaviour vindictive. She inhaled another jet of smoke and slowly breathed out, pushing back her short brown hair from her face as she did so. There was an awkward silence, only broken by the emergence of Daisy Donahue (Girl # 4) from the corridor.

"Oh, hello Jewel. Didn't realise you'd come in. Dear me, you look a bit of a mess, are you feeling Ok?" She asked with unfeigned empathy.

"Yeah I'm alright, though I suppose I do look a bit of a state. How's Sylvie holding up?"

"Not well unfortunately. Despite my pleas she still won't leave the bathroom." Daisy said, obviously rather exasperated and tired.

"So...when we want to umm..." and here Jewel hesitated with a little oriental modesty, "well when we want to _relieve_ ourselves...what exactly do we do?"

"We go to the other toilet – there are two bedrooms, each with an en-suite bathroom." Sue explained, Jewel now looking a tad embarrassed.

"We should never have brought that useless bitch with us; she'll drag us all down I guarantee you." Anne complained, viciously stubbing her cigarette out in a glass ashtray on the coffee table.

"We've had this discussion already," snapped Daisy, still standing upright and leaning against the doorframe "we need strength in numbers and Sylvie's a decent person, who deserves better than this."

"We all deserve better than this!" retorted Sue, "But these are the cards we've been dealt and we're just going to have to make the best of them, so wallowing in self-pity, like the esteemed Sylvie, isn't going to make matters better. Capiche?"

"Perhaps," Jewel began, with uncharacteristic icy carnality, "we should start trying to figure some way of getting ourselves out of this situation, rather than bickering and belittling one another. Let's think of Battle Royale as a game of poker; the cards we have may be bad, but that doesn't mean we can't bluff and cheat our way to success," Jewel turned her head to face the grimacing Sue, the faintest of smugly superior smiles forming on her pouty lips. When Jewel spoke again, it was in a harsh conspiratorial whisper,

"Capiche?"

29 Students Remain.


	7. Hour 5: 29 Students Remain

Day 1 4:03 AM

_Boys don't cry_

Those three words resounded in the ears of Christopher Wendell (Boy #11) as he quietly shed tears onto the sleeve of his shirt. He'd heard the phrase said so many times by his unendingly displeased father; _boys don't cry, boys get up and make something of their lives!_

His father wasn't a success, throughout his life he'd never been anything more than a nondescript mediocrity and he knew it. He'd gone to a moderately good school, achieved reasonable grades in his exams and graduated to go to a fairly well thought of university. Later in his unexceptional life, he'd started work in a job where the pay was restrained and the working hours long enough to bleed the company's employees white with fatigue. The woman he'd eventually married was similarly unremarkable and he sensed his life and his livelihood were ebbing away, now to be replaced by the drearily monotonous sense of failure.

But then Christopher was born. From a very early age, not only was it clear that he was a bright child, but that he also was set to grow up to become a handsome young man. In Chris, Mr. Wendell saw a pathway to redemption, as though it were a sign from the heavens that through Chris he would be able to rectify the mistakes he made in his life that had resulted in him becoming so disillusioned and unhappy. Chris must _never_ be ensnared in the pitfalls that had caused Mr. Wendell to squander his youth and live out the rest of his days in regret and underachievement; Chris would _not_ take a blasé attitude with his studies, Chris would _not_ become apathetic towards sports and Chris _would_ choose his friends on the basis of their intelligence and level of studiousness.

At first, these rules hadn't troubled Chris; he enjoyed the way his father doted on him and after all, why should he have been annoyed when his father tried to cajole him into working harder and exercising more – he was just catering for his son's wellbeing wasn't he? Initially yes. But soon his desire to see his son make it in life was transposed into an insatiable craving for vicarious self-affirmation through Chris's successes. Whenever Chris scored an A in English or a goal in soccer, Mr. Wendell felt as though the burden of his failure was lessened slightly and so persisted in pushing Chris forward, trying to get him to scale previously unreachable heights of accomplishment. Chris obeyed his father because he was a naïve and insecure pre-teen who truly did love his dad, since his mother usually ignored him, being too wrapped up in her woes of self-induced hypochondria to pay her one child any real attention.

But then Chris reached adolescence. He did not rebel, as such, but he began to progressively question his father's guidance, his frustration rising as he started to doubt his father's intentions; the 'infallible' wisdom he'd had bestowed on him seeming ever more dubious and self-serving. Chris was thought to be something of an oddity at Bray Wood; attractive no doubt, but so cagey and dedicated to his work that he often came across as haughty and obnoxious.

"Why are you always demanding that I work harder?" Chris eventually asked his father.

"Why do you think? This is all for _your_ benefit, I remember how I slacked and wasted my time and how everyday I now wonder how much better my life would be had made a greater effort with my studies. Look at you Chris; you've got so much going for you in life, how could you possibly want to throw it all away? I only am bloody hard on you because I don't want the same misery that I suffer to befall you because you don't have enough motivation in life." His father answered brusquely, barely looking up from his newspaper.

Chris felt a strange cyclone of emotions welling up inside him and burst into tears.

"_Don't you **dare** cry Chris_," Shouted his father, slamming his newspaper down on the kitchen table and rising from his seat, "only babies and girls cry - you are neither, so start acting like a man!"

Chris rested his head of blonde hair against one of the church pews and continued to sob. Behind the thick granite walls of the church he felt he could safely revisit the detritus of emotions that for so long had lain hidden in the depths of his cerebrum. His father was seldom aggressive with him; he didn't need to be, he'd already driven into Chris that anything less than full marks on a test or an absolute victory on the playing field was tantamount to besmirching the family's name. His father didn't need to get angry with him, because Chris could generally be relied upon to castigate himself if his performance in academia or on the sports pitch was 'below par'.

And now, ironies of ironies, he found himself in the most hyper-competitive game known to man. He looked around him; the church was damp and squalid, several of the pews were being rotted away by a swarm woodlice and the white marble alter was chipped and scarred from vandalism. The stained glass windows, depicting what appeared to be the apocalypse (clearly the BR admin had a rather obvious style of humour), all had a few panes of glass broken (or missing) and the once bright colours had now been dulled by age. Chris had been looking for sanctuary (both in life and the battle) and the church seemed a good option to be safe from others, but now as he gazed at the rickety arc of the ceiling, he wondered whether the church might be its own potential hazard.

The coldness of his silver Sig Sauer pistol felt ever weightier as he stared at the effigy of the Virgin Mary. He thought of his parents and how they would be watching his every move, his father privately willing him to beat out the competition whilst his mother remained in torpor from her mid-morning alcohol binge. And what if he won? What would they say then? His mother would probably shrug and stare at him with her hollow eyes, trying to scrutinise his emotional sate, whilst his father would begin his tried and tested mantra about how 'only the best man can win' and assure him he did the right thing. Is this what he wanted; is this what he'd spent his life slaving for, after all the sleepless nights spent studying, the hours of pumping iron in the gym until his veins throbbed and his head pulsated with weariness, this was the best life could offer him?

Did he really want to play this game?

* * *

Unrequited romantic desire; it has driven poets to wax lyrical, Hollywood to commit the heartache to celluloid and even an unfortunate anguished few to take their own lives.

Right now, romantic desire (though not necessarily unreciprocated) was driving Jun Ishibashi (Girl #12) as she hastened across the island, trying to find her would-be love. She knew he might reject her, with either curt disdain or polite cordiality, but she also was aware that this would almost certainly be the last time she'd have the opportunity to express her feelings.

Her pigtails bounced excitedly as she sprinted along, she had no idea where her source of affection was, but she felt it would be unwise not to keep running. She was the third of the year's trio of individual who were classed as 'the Japs', along with Jewel and Fei (who was actually of Chinese heritage – though to the pupils of Bray Wood since he 'looked oriental', this fact was not regarded to be of much importance). Indeed as the fates would have it, Jun and Jewel had even been on the same flight that carried them away from their home of Japan to the unfamiliar land of Britain (however Jewel had been seated in first class whilst Jun had flown economy – an analogy which pretty much summed up Jun's existence with Jewel at Bray Wood).

Whilst Jun had a certain girlish cuteness (accentuated by her styling her hair in pigtails), it was Jewel that turned heads and made hearts leap. With a single flick of her long, silky, jet-black hair she could melt a heart and send a boy into a tailspin of lust, whilst Jun seemed to sink evermore into the background, resigning herself to henceforth always having to play second fiddle to Jewel.

The one thing that propelled her forward at school (and indeed in this very battle) was love. She was besotted with him, even going so far as to work harder in order to be elevated up to the top science set so she could be with him more often. He sometimes returned her gazes, brief little looks with those entrancing auburn eyes, that didn't reveal anything and only made Jun yearn for him more. Did he reciprocate this affection? Perhaps; whenever she locked eyes with him she sensed a palpable spark of attraction and in this situation she could only follow her heart (however trite that might sound). Time was now running short; could anyone truly blame her for acting out on her impulses?

She halted. There was the faint twitter of birds in the sky, the darkness was receding, daybreak would occur soon. She found herself at a pathway crossroads and paused, trying to calculate what she would say when she saw (_if_ she saw him – though she wasn't willing to contemplate that possibility), varieties of words and syntax cascading through her brain. She looked at the sinister Gothicism of the chapel. She was tired, it might not be the best refuge, but she needed some sleep and it was probably inadvisable to remain out in the open for too long. Besides, she might even find her love there. She smiled at the thought and walked briskly towards the two gigantic wooden front doors.

Little did Jun realise the seriousness of the ramification this decision would cause.

* * *

Frankie Almond Smith (Girl #14) stood over the body of Christopher Wendell. The blood slowly flowed away from his skull through the cavernous hole fashioned by the gunshot; he lay face down on the floor, with his legs splayed and mouth gaping in shock. Frankie was rooted to the spot, her eyes fixed on the mutilated corpse. She'd never seen a dead body and the sombre atmosphere of the church only seemed to emphasize the horror of the situation. The Sig Sauer pistol lay abandoned on the floor; slowly Frankie crouched down and picked it up, wiping some of the fresh gore off it with her sleeve. She stood up again, barely noticing the faint creak of the wooden door opening.

"You monster." The voice was quiet and controlled but unmistakably enraged. Frankie looked down the Church aisle to see Jun Ishibashi approaching, each of her steps taken with slow, methodical precision. There was something almost surreal about her appearance; her pigtails and long fringe, along with the pleated navy blue school skirt and similarly coloured blue blazer she wore, all seemed an incongruous juxtaposition to the large metallic baseball bat she carried in her arms. She moved ever nearer to Frankie.

"**You fucking bitch!" **She screamed, raising her baseball bat and charging forward.

The Sig Sauer pistol tumbled out of Frankie's hand as she stepped forward, her hands raised in front of her in defensive protest.

"You don't understand! I didn't..." but Frankie was unable to finish, Jun had let out an animalistic roar and powerfully swung the bat at her head. Frankie dived to the floor, narrowly missing the bat's arc of motion; she caught sight of the Sig Sauer resting idly on the cold marble floor. No – she couldn't do that; she had no fondness for Jun, but she wasn't prepared to kill her. Instead she quickly shoved her hand into her blazer pocket and retrieved the little black stun gun. She lunged at Jun's leg, flicking the stun gun's switch on and pressing the two electrodes against the exposed flesh in one smooth manoeuvre. Jun shrieked and fell backwards; though still clutching the steel baseball bat, as Frankie quickly lifted herself from the floor.

"Listen Jun you've got it all wrong, I..." but Jun had gotten to her feet and raised the bat above her head. Frankie ran into the adjacent pew as Jun threw all her weight into whacking the bat against the end of the already rotten pew, smashing a large chunk of it in an eruption of splinters and wood chippings. Frankie stopped halfway down the pew and shouted out yet again,

"For fuck's sake Jun, **I didn't kill him!**"

"**Bullshit!" **Jun bluntly responded, rushing towards Frankie, frenziedly swirling her baseball bat from side to side. Frankie reached the end of the decayed pew and again Jun struck the putrid wood with her bat, missing Frankie by a matter of inches and sending another shower of shattered wood hurtling into the air.

Frankie promptly ran into the next pew along; her best bet would be to grab her bags (maybe the Sig too) and make a dash for it, Jun being clearly beyond reason. She sprinted along the pew, her high heels sharply clicking against the floor whilst the swish of Jun's baseball bat continued to resonate around the church as she followed her. Having just reached the end of the pew, there was a subdued 'snap' as Frankie's left heel broke in two and she fell to the floor right next to Christopher's cadaver.

Jun catapulted herself towards the felled Frankie, preparing to strike, wielding the baseball bat in one hand, ready to avenge Christopher, the only person she'd ever loved. Frankie desperately shoved her stun gun against Jun's bat carrying hand. Jun recoiled, the bat flying from her hands and landing with a clunk on the pew behind her. Frankie tried to stand but she'd twisted her ankle and could only wince in pain as she struggled to get to her feet.

"Please Jun, don't..." Frankie pleaded, but the once sweet and genial Jun had long since departed, now replaced by a vengeance fixated aggressor. Jun kicked the stun gun from Frankie's hand, comforted by the way it clattered away from her across the marble. She thrust her foot into Frankie's stomach and got down onto her knees whilst Frankie futilely attempted to crawl away. Jun grabbed Frankie's right arm and roughly pulled her back, ignoring her helpless whimpering. Jun struck Frankie's tear streaked face with the flat of her hand, a loud thwack being produced as her palm collided with the flesh,

"So did you enjoy it Frankie, huh? Was it fun? Did you enjoy seeing the fear in his eyes?"

Frankie's arms flailed as she tried to block the oncoming blows, but still Jun persisted in beating her, walloping Frankie again and sensing a perverse thrill course through her diminutive body as she did so.

"So how did you do it?" Jun screamed, slapping the hapless Frankie once again, "Did you flash him your cunt and say 'I'm ready if you are'? After all it's not like you have any inhibitions about fucking your brains out, **is it?**"

Apart from the red blotches on her face (from where Jun had hit her), Frankie's features were now a deathly white, the prospect of her impending demise becoming ever more real. She lay on the floor, using her right arm to ineffectually fend off Jun's fists whilst she clawed for her stun gun with her left. She felt her hand close around a solid object; she grasped it and pulled it towards her.

"Don't even think about it!" said Jun, fastening her hands around Frankie's throat and squeezing. Frankie felt the air drain from her lungs as her breathing became constricted, she tried to push Jun off her with her right hand, but she'd been so weakened by the fight that she didn't have enough strength to do so. Her left hand clasped the unidentified item even more tightly.

A booming gunshot echoed around the walls of the ancient church.

Frankie took a deep intake of oxygen as Jun released her grip.

"Murderer," Jun croaked feebly.

Frankie looked up and squealed slightly at the sight she saw. The bullet had entered Jun's abdomen, tearing into her flesh and staining her blouse a deep red; Frankie realised she still held the Sig Sauer pistol in her blood-smeared hands.

"Oh God, Jun...are you Ok?" Frankie stuttered, the impact of her actions catching up to her with the speed of a Bullet Train.

"What do you think? You just shot me in the gut, of course I'm not fucking Ok!" Jun testily answered, leaning forward and savagely coughing; specks of her blood defiling the otherwise spotless marble floor, "Well, I bet your pleased with yourself now – two kills already, must be guaranteed to boost your odds eh?"

"I didn't kill Chris," Frankie said quietly, "he was dead when I arrived here, he shot himself in the head; I suppose he just couldn't bear to play the game – a qualm that I can understand."

Jun looked at Frankie (her rage now having subsided and been replaced by physical agony), seeing the forlorn look in her eyes and realising, with a horrific plummeting sensation in her already torn stomach, that she was telling the truth.

"Talk about a cruel twist in the tale," said Jun, "I never even got to tell him what I felt, now where's the justice in that?"

"Look Jun, I might have something in my bag I could bandage you with, then perhaps...I could take you to the infirmary?" Frankie cautiously suggested, not at all enthusiastic about potentially being lumbered with an ally who was as good as dead.

"What's the point? I'll be riding a one way ticket to the great beyond in a matter of moments – there's nothing you can do for me."

"Jun, I'm so sorry, I never meant..."

"It's Ok Frankie... well it's not Ok but I suppose you didn't mean any harm. They say sorry is the hardest word to utter, something that almost certainly holds true in your case, I was marked for death the moment I got landed in this nightmare so I'm not going to take you on a guilt trip. And hey who knows – maybe I'll even see Chris and tell him how I feel...or should that be 'felt', fuck it's scary to think about how people are now going to always have to refer to me in the past tense."

A thick, suffocating darkness swamped her; only a single beacon of iridescent light in the distance was visible as her sight turned to tunnel vision.

"Take care of yourself Frankie." Jun said distantly, before lifelessly slumping down onto the floor beside Christopher.

For several minutes Frankie sat silently, her once iron-clad game plan now dispelled by the realisation that even if killing was reputed to get easier the more you did it; she had no desire to continue along that path.

She looked at Jun. Sure, she never liked her and it was true she had the mitigating circumstance of self-defence to justify killing her, but that didn't make her feel any better inside. Jun and Chris lay side by side, two star crossed lovers that actually made Romeo and Juliet's predicament seem preferable.

Frankie started to gag, her nausea causing convulsions in her stomach, before the vomit finally spewed out of her mouth.

And she'd thought this game would be easy...

27 Students Remain


	8. Hour 6: 27 Students Remain

Day 1 5:01 AM

The sun rose into the sky; a yellow behemoth of energy, its rays of sunlight spreading languidly across the island like treacle, illuminating even the darkest corners and momentarily instilling an intangible feeling of hopefulness in Simon Holcombe (Boy #6).

"Ok, it's my shift now – get some rest Simon," said Joanna Simpson (Girl #6), rising from the settee she had perched herself on and walking towards him. She took the shotgun from his hands and patted him gently on the shoulder. Initially she'd proposed that all three of them alternate between doing guard duty and sleeping, however ultimately only she and Simon had fulfilled this proposal. Tulista had been exhausted and now was sleeping soundly in one of the bedrooms. Simon and Joanna found that they were so frazzled with worry that sleep was quite impossible and hence they concluded that they'd let Tulista snooze whilst the two of them kept watch.

This proved to be a pleasantly uncomplicated task; all it entailed was walking around the apartment, checking to see if anybody was in the vicinity of the building and (unless it was Ben Ackart) firing off a warning shot to scare them away. Simon had soon cottoned to the fact that the shotgun wasn't loaded – Joanne blushed and quickly gave him some ammunition – but as of yet, there had been no need to fire it; no other students had yet ventured towards them, the apartment block being so far north and inconveniently positioned for a prospective 'resident' to reach it.

"Thanks Joanna, but I'm just going to sit here for the moment."

"Suit yourself; make sure you wake Tulista in about half an hour, Ok?" Joanna commanded, briskly strolling out of the living room to begin her patrol. Simon remained seated on the windowsill, gazing dreamily into the distance. He couldn't sleep, he was tired beyond belief but he could not, no matter how much he tried, get any sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes all he could think about was that gunshot, imagining Ben falling limply to the ground, dead because Simon didn't have the patience (or the courage) to wait for him. He was wracked with guilt, which was only compounded and perpetuated by the fact that he'd never much liked Ben.

He'd often felt that Ben had taken something from him – namely Nate. He hadn't felt _that_ way about Nate (he held no interests in that particular sexual arena), but their ties of friendship that had once been so strong, seemed to have loosened shortly after Ben arrived on the scene. Ben hadn't attempted to instigate any kind of estrangement between Nate and Simon (he was far too docile a creature to do that), but his very presence seemed to cause Nate to increasingly disregard Simon. Perhaps Simon should have tried to directly address this issue with Nate, but it was too late now anyway; Nate had probably been unceremoniously stuffed into a body bag in preparation for him being shipped back home to his grief-stricken parents.

Given the circumstances of their first meeting, it would have perhaps seemed unlikely that such a close friendship could have developed between Nate and Simon, but then again, human beings have always been an inherently unpredictable species. At the age of six, they'd attended the same primary school and on one especially sunny July morning, Nate had felt a strange compulsion to push the (then rather small) Simon onto the gravelled playground. At the time, he'd never really spoken to Simon and neither liked nor disliked him; he just had felt an overpowering urge to see him fall to the ground and voyeuristically watch his reaction. Simon tumbled and howled with pain, clutching his badly grazed knee, Nate now feeling an oddly remorseful sensation. There were the inevitable reprimands; Nate was coerced into apologising to Simon and was made to sit in the corner during playtime, where he moped and scowled for the twenty minutes before the school day ended.

In retrospect, Simon wondered whether this was simply Nate trying to break the ice with characteristic dramaturgy, as over the course of the days that followed a friendship blossomed between them. Whilst in the course of life, many friends invariably come and go like bus boys in a restaurant, their amity had endured for a decade and Simon put huge value on it.

And then they started school at Bray Wood.

Simon didn't think it odd that during the first two years Nate chose to be including Ben in their group (to which Martyn Taylor had also been added – by Simon as it happened), he was something of a loner but he slotted into the niche of charismatic smartass quite comfortably. The thing Simon relished most about knowing Nate was being able to see past the façade he projected to his fellow pupils; to know that beneath the veneer of cocky indifference he was actually quite a kind soul. Simon always knew that Nate would sensitively listen to a spillage of his emotional distress and would counsel and console him. With hindsight however, Simon realised that Nate had only once in their friendship, during the third year, elected to confide in him. And Simon had screwed up magnificently.

Nate had been sitting quietly in his study; his demeanour was pensive and he looked genuinely unhappy. Unsettled by this, Simon inquired as to what was the matter, eventually prising the truth out of Nate that he was in love, with perhaps the most unlikely of the school's candidates. Of all the reactions Simon could have had (disgust, sympathy, indifference etc.), he chose the worst one of all; he laughed raucously, despite not being particularly amused, and from that moment on one of the ties that had bonded them together was irreparably severed.

Joanna returned to the room and slouched onto a moth-eaten couch. Simon was rather attracted to her; she wasn't an archetypal beauty but her resilient calmness and irresistible sass made her very appealing to him. Whilst Simon trusted her completely (she wasn't that backstabbing type – was she?), he knew she was lying about something and suspected she didn't have complete confidence in the honesty of either him or Tulista. Perhaps it was her nationality that charmed him (he had a fondness for those American accents) or maybe it was her quick wit and easygoing persona. Either way it sadly didn't make much difference; Joanna had politely declined the offer of going out with him, but Simon was understanding and felt no ill will towards her because of it.

"Did you have an interesting shift?" Simon asked, bored by the lack of activity and anxious about the upcoming six hour report.

"Oh yeah it was a real thrill ride; I gunned down sixteen kamikaze playboy models, met Sigourney Weaver and found a treasure trove of nail polish. No actually it was just the same old dull routine." She answered drolly.

"Is it just my imagination, or is this Battle Royale becoming more and more like school?" Simon said, yawning and languorously stretching his arms.

"You could say that," Joanna muttered, twiddling her thumbs and staring up at the ceiling, the tediousness starting to get to her.

"Joanna, we need to talk," Simon started to say and seeing her expression quickly clarified, "not about you and me, or any kind of emotional dilemma about love and so on and so forth." Joanna looked mildly relived; Simon took a long prolonged breath and continued, "Joanna, why did you lie to me?"

Joanna looked truly taken aback; the wall of self-assurance she had erected around herself momentarily crumbling to reveal a fragile and frightened child. She stared at Simon, making no effort to conceal her astonishment.

"Joanna, did you genuinely think that I would believe a story about a magical self-help book that gives you all the inside knowledge about the political machinations and secrets of the Battle Royale program? If the BR program is government sanctioned, then a book like that wouldn't be allowed publication." Simon gently said, he wanted the truth but wasn't about to start abrasively demanding it.

Joanna sighed and got to her feet. Her eyes were sore and bloodshot from sleep depravation; she rubbed them gently with the back of her hand.

"You're right of course," she said, "the book was a lame explanation but it was the best I could come up with in the heat of the moment."

"Tulista seemed convinced," Simon suggested rather feebly.

"Tulista is scared beyond belief and she's almost certainly panicking about whether she'll ever see Krisha alive again. Considering her position, I'm not surprised she bought what I said; she's seriously distressed and needs assurance that everything is somehow going to be ok, that's why she wants to believe me." Joanna offhandedly explained.

"So everything you said was just a lot of fabricated shit was it?"

Joanna gave a bitter laugh, "No everything I said is (insofar as I know) absolutely true. How I know all this information is another matter however, it's much less innocent than the reason I initially led you to understand."

"Joanna," Simon said, standing up and walking (slightly apprehensively) towards her, "we'll never be able to work as a group if we're not capable of being honest with each other. Whatever the explanation for this is, I'll hear you out and so will Tulista and we won't judge you because of what you have to say."

Joanna turned away, wiping away a tear that was surreptitiously sneaking down her cheek.

"In that case," she said hoarsely, "you'd better wake Tulista and then...I'll tell you everything."

* * *

Daniel Swane (Boy #4) was, to his mind at least, an unsurpassed illusionist. He didn't specialise in that cheap magical kind of illusionary tricks, no he was what he would describe as a 'social illusionist'. He was two faced; an expert charmer who could woo the women and amuse the boys before he cut down a lesser social entity with a vicious insult (though out of earshot of those he wanted to impress – something that he never failed to achieve). He was treated with reverence in the way that only a deftly manipulative person can be and despite not being much of a star in the looks department, remained the most plausible contender for the title of 'year's most popular male student'. He was also smart. Very smart; his one rival in the brains department being the now deceased Nate Benedict. He smiled to himself as he rushed through the forest, he'd of probably gone after Nate if given the opportunity, but now he'd been helpfully spared the bother.

His parents had always told him he was a winner; not necessarily on the sports pitch, but definitely in the classroom and he intended to carry this success through to the Battle Royale. But it wasn't so simple; he couldn't just go on a bloodthirsty killing spree, millions of people were watching and judging him at this very moment. He'd always intended on leading a life of prestige and comfort as an adult, something that would be harder to attain after his victory if he was perceived to be an amoral mass-murderer. No, he would have to choose his targets with care and engineer the situation to his advantage, somehow making the kills acts of self-defence or at the very least not malicious but out of fear or maybe a tragic 'misunderstanding'. Every move he made must be a self-conscious one; he mustn't appear weak and vulnerable but he also must refrain from clearly contrived attempts at heroics, he must be a noble everyman fighting for his life but retaining his humanity. He was a superb thespian, his performances on stage entrancing the audience as they marvelled at his theatrical prowess. His life was a performance, an intricate tapestry of different personas that he alternated between in order to get what he wanted; but Battle Royale would be harder, he could not for a second stop acting out the part he had created for himself. Daniel had always liked a challenge (particularly an acting one) and Battle Royale would be his masterwork.

Daniel slowed down, he was in some indeterminable area of the forest and needed to look at his map and find out what his weapon was. An hour or so previously, he'd been walking past the Church on the south side of the island and heard a gunshot ring out, he hadn't stopped running since. He halted, breathing deeply with exhaustion (he wasn't exactly in peak physical condition), he was tall and slim with very dark brown (almost black) curls and facial features that could either be construed as roguishly attractive or leeringly cunning. He sat down on the grass, it was covered in the damp of early morning dew but he didn't care, he obtained his map from his bag and started to search for his weapon. Simon Holcombe and Ben Ackart would be his two prime targets; he'd always detested Nate and his posse, they were amongst the few who saw right through his mystique of brilliance into his dark core of egotistical emptiness and they made sure he'd never forget it. Now that Martyn and Nate were no longer of this world, he'd just have to make do with disposing of Ben and Simon (though preferably in a way that wouldn't reflect badly on him – was that actually possible? He'd think of something, he always did), before he became the fulcrum of the nation's attention as he triumphed over his peers; the true champion of Bray Wood.

The glory, the spectacle, the exaltation and the victory would _all_ be his – nothing could stand in his way; he was more than ready for his 15 minutes of fame.

He extracted from his bag the metal case that purported to contain his weapon. Trembling with excitement and anticipation he slowly opened the lid. He gasped and turned away in disgust, trying not vomit in revulsion. Those sick fucks – how could they do this to him! He couldn't let himself throw up; that might be seen by the viewers as a sign of weakness and that would be completely unacceptable, he wanted to portray himself to them in a completely different light. Slowly, shaking with trepidation and squeamishness, he stared down into the metal case.

Martyn Taylor's decapitated head stared inertly back up at him.

* * *

"So everything you told us was just a load of truth-evasive bollocks?" Tulista snapped, having been roused from her slumber by Simon she was uncharacteristically irascible, her eyes burning with anger. Simon was finding himself extremely attracted to her, perhaps it was they way her hair was so tousled and unkempt and yet her face still radiated perfection. Of course it could just be a hormonal imbalance created by the Battle Royale; his body realising that as death may be imminent, the need to reproduce was greater.

"Tulista, don't jump to conclusions," Simon quietly advised her. Joanna was slumped lethargically in one of the musty old armchairs; Tulista sighed and seated herself next to Simon on the decrepit old sofa.

"I'm sorry, I just...I really felt that we might...well, what with your knowledge, have a chance of getting ourselves out of this situation," Tulista said meekly. Joanna sat upright in her chair as though coming alive again.

"Tulista we _do _have a very good chance of freeing ourselves from this 'program' and everything I said _was_ true. It's just that I lied about how I came by this knowledge..." Joanna began, but Tulista quickly interpolated,

"Joanna, you've never participated in one of these American Battle Royales before have you?"

Joanna blinked and looked briefly nonplussed, "No Tulista," she said slowly, "I've never been in a Battle Royale before – if that's the reason you supposed I have all this info. If I had been in a previous Battle Royale and won, statistically the chances are I'd either of committed suicide or ended up being locked away in a mental institution – you may be a winner but the odds are you won't get out unscathed."

"I'm sorry I just thought..." Tulista blushed scarlet and started to fiddle with her hair out of embarrassment.

"It's Ok Tulista, as reasoned guesses go that was perfectly understandable," Joanna paused and looked down at her feet, wishing there was some way she didn't have to tell the truth. However one look at their faces told her that their anticipation was not abating, she took a single deep intake of breath and then began.

"First of all I need to provide you with a vague family tree. Ben's father is the eldest of three siblings, one younger brother and another younger sister – my mother. Ackart is the original family name but obviously once my mother married, she automatically adopted a different surname – not Simpson by the way; that's just an alias – that surname being Benedetti. My father is James Benedetti – a name which will mean nothing to you and would probably mean very little to all but the most politically aware of Americans. Two years ago he was a respected member of the senate, the economic problems and unstoppable crime wave were seemingly completely out of hand so he decided to band together with six other senators who were proposing the instating of a particularly radical law pioneered in Japan – namely the Battle Royale act."

Seeing the revolted expressions on their faces, Joanna hastily added, "Of the seven, only two were actually fully aware of what the BR program would entail. The other five were led to believe that they would be lending their support to a program that only targeted juvenile delinquents rather than regular school kids. Of course when the law was passed it became pretty clear that program was intended to be all-inclusive of teenagers, no exceptions made. My father was basically powerless do anything about it, but he was in a good position to get inside knowledge which he told to me at length, lest me and my class were ever drafted in to fight – yes even though I'm the daughter of one of BR America's founders, I was still going to be treated 'just like everyone else', to prove that there wasn't any bias prevalent in the BR administration."

"So is that it?" Simon asked.

"No," Joanna said quietly, "though my father was _kind_ enough to give me this information because he knew it would give me an advantage over the other competitors (private tutoring was illegalised by the way – so I couldn't get out of school that way), however he never bestowed his knowledge to my other first cousin; John. Rather unfortunate in view of the fact that after the BR act had been in place for six months his class was selected to battle it out."

"Good God!" muttered Tulista.

"Yeah, John was an only child and his parents pride and joy. He was 'lucky' in his weapon; he got an AK-47. It was surreal; my father had always recommended I watch the Battle Royales so I could 'get some tips', but this time we watched John's Battle as a family. In a...well I don't know I suppose he was just overwhelmed with paranoia and terror, but whatever the cause he decided to shoot down fourteen of his fellow students (including many of his friends). His girlfriend tried to calm him down but...well he was so far gone I don't think he even realised who she was. He shot her in the head at point blank range – and he'd always maintained that she was the love his life – but then...I think he finally realised the seriousness of the actions, so he put the gun barrel in his mouth and..." Joanne trailed off; she gulped and continued, "Well I think you can fill in the blanks. Unsurprisingly John's parents want nothing to do with us after that and they moved away to...well they never told us where, the way my uncle looked at my father after John had died, it just..." again Joanna stopped, she was breathing heavily, combating the tears that were starting to well up in her eyes, "still at least they were stronger than my mother; I returned home from school a couple of weeks later and discovered she'd taken 27 Paracetomal tablets and asphyxiated in her own vomit, there was nothing I could..."

Joanna couldn't fight it any longer, she burst into tears, wailing and shaking with anguish, years of buried misery surfacing in one long gush of emotion.

The speakers across the island came to life as the clocks struck 6:00 AM and the first six hour report commenced.

"Good morning my juvenile little crumpets," Mr. Samuels's voice was even more annoying than previously, "it's time for me to announce which of your friends are now the devil's minions in a world that truly is far, far away."

27 Students Remain.


	9. Hour 7: 27 Students Remain

Day 1 6:01 AM

Mr. Samuels's jovial death report continued.

"So now, onto the latest death toll; Fei Yan (Boy #2) decided to be a knight in shining armour for one fair maiden, but unfortunately he consequently had his hand dismembered by Tian Berkley (Boy #1) before Phil Argyle (Boy #15 ) wedged a sickle in his neck. Congratulations to Phil for drawing first blood, bad luck Fei for behaving like a naïvely romantic imbecile. Next on our list of deceased is Christopher Wendell (Boy #11) who managed to let the side down horrendously by spinelessly committing suicide. Now a word of advice to the rest of you; this kind of cowardice is both shameful to the reputations of your families and is also a needless sacrifice that only makes the game easier for others. However on a more positive note; the third and final kill of the six hour period was Jun Ishibashi (Girl #12), shot in the stomach by Frankie Almond Smith (Girl #14) and died a death of pure delicious agony."

Simon Holcombe (Boy #6) felt a warm tingling of relief sweep through his chest. Ben Ackart (Boy #8) was alive (though probably incapacitated) and Simon started to feel his guilt subside as he realised there was still opportunity to rescue him. He was about to vocally express his gladness at the lack of Ben's name on the list, but Tulista shushed him as Mr. Samuels's voice spoke again,

"Frankly your performance so far could be most charitably described as desultory, so if the kill count doesn't start rising soon, I'm afraid I'll have to enforce some rather undesirable punishments upon you."

"I now am going to dictate what the danger zones are and at what hours they're to become active; so have your pen and map at the ready. After that little digression, I will announce which student has won the audiences' award for 'Best Kill of the past Six Hours'." Mr. Samuels coughed officiously before proceeding, "At seven AM, zone F-2 becomes active followed by zone D-7 at eight. After that there is zone G-4 at nine, then F-6 at ten, C-2 at eleven and finally, B-4 at midday. At the next report, the danger zones will be reorganised; some of the previous ones mentioned will remain whilst others will be changed."

"But now, I am proud to announce that the audience have declared Phil Argyle to be the winner of the 'best kill' accolade. So stay where you are Phil, some troops are winging their way towards you with your prize. In the meantime, everybody else is required to refrain from attacking Phil until he has received his gift, unless they wish to have their collar detonated of course. Well goodbye for now, let the carnage continue!"

There was an unsociable pause within the living room, only broken by the relieved proclamation from Tulista that 'We're safe – none of the zones include us."

Joanna looked at Tulista with her bleary eyes and said, "For now Tulista, for now."

* * *

The girls sat alertly around the kitchen table. Anne Priestly (Girl #11) limply held her cigarette in her hand, coils of silvery smoke rolling over her lips. Sue Cathcart (Girl #3) had laid her map across the table; she and Daisy Donahue (Girl #4) were studying it closely whilst Jewel Siu Tung (Girl #10) sat back in her chair, shakily drinking her water and awaiting their verdict. She kept imagining Fei lying helplessly on the ground, hysterically pleading for mercy before Tian severed his hand with some kind of razor sharp implement.

"Ok, the cottage becomes a danger zone at ten o'clock and the log cabin at midday. The other selected zones are just an assortment of open spaces. We've a little less than six hours to prepare for our departure, however where we go is a matter of choice; personally I'd recommend the infirmary because it's nearby and probably quite well fortified. There's also the chance of medical supplies too." Sue firmly suggested.

"What are our other re-location options?" asked Daisy.

"Other than the Church nothing else is really in range," Anne replied, finally extinguishing her twelfth cigarette in the ashtray, "and frankly the church is an inferior hideout, so I say we go with the infirmary."

"I second that. What do you think Jewel?" Daisy inquired. Jewel took a swig of water, licked her lips with her characteristic (though unintentional) flirtatiousness and then spoke,

"Yeah sure, the infirmary's a good idea. However should we leave as soon as possible or wait until the last minute? If we leave soon we stand a better chance of getting there before anybody else, but staying here for as long as possible provides us with much needed security." Jewel stated matter-of –factly.

"I think staying here for the moment is our best bet." said Sue.

"I agree," Daisy concurred, "besides, we need more time to lure Sylvie out of the bathroom."

"Whatever happened to good old brute force?" Anne snidely asked.

"You must be fucking joking; that could plunge her into some sort of violent paranoid schizophrenia and as we don't know what her weapon is, I'm not willing to chance it." Sue retorted vigorously.

"Well if Sylvie poses a threat," said Anne, eyeing her Colt 45.suggestively, "I'm more than willing to put one right between her eyes."

"You're a bitch," said Daisy without a trace of irony.

"No darling, I'm not _a_ bitch, I'm _the _bitch." Anne slyly responded.

"If you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to do something worthwhile." Daisy coldly informed them, getting up from her seat and strutting away towards the cabin's corridor.

"So what do we do now?" asked Jewel.

"We do what any sane person does in the face of insurmountable odds." Said Anne, Jewel looked expectantly at her with endearing (though insincere) wild-eyed innocence. Anne grinned and said simply, "We watch TV."

"It works?" asked Jewel, obviously sceptical as she looked at the widescreen TV that stood inactive against the far wall.

"It does indeed," affirmed Sue, "though it only has three channels; BBC news, The National Geographic channel and some strange golden oldies TV station that constantly shows Starsky and Hutch re-runs."

"We're forsaken to die and they couldn't even let us watch MTV one last time..." Jewel quietly mused, shaking her head with a mixture of amusement and sadness; the TV almost emblematic of a carefree past existence she had led that could now never be regained. Jewel stood up and walked away towards the door leading to the corridor.

"Where're you going Jewel?" Anne called after her.

"Oh you know – I thought I'd powder my nose and dress up in my ball gown, maybe even change my underwear too..." Jewel answered; pleased that even in the face of death she still retained a certain dry wit.

Poor Fei, he'd had more decency and civility than almost the entire year group put together and this was the treatment he received? Still, Jewel wasn't about lurch and flounder in masochistic recriminations over his death; it was Fei's decision to help her (one that she would be eternally grateful for) and thus the consequences he suffered were not her responsibility. Still, she couldn't help but feel a pang of sorrow for the loss of not only Fei but also Jun, who'd been unjustly murdered by the hands of her supposed 'friend' Frankie. Six hours and already two good people had bitten the dust – and who was to say she wouldn't be next?

She opened the door and stepped into the narrow and unlit corridor. There was an empty cupboard at the end and two plain wooden doors, one on each wall, which led off into the comfortably furnished bedrooms. The door on the left was slightly ajar, a slim shaft of brilliant light visible through the crack, Daisy's soothing tone of voice clearly audible as she beseeched the infuriatingly mute Sylvie to leave the bathroom.

Jewel couldn't help but smile in spite of her fear. Daisy was currently the only person giving the group any kind of cohesion; though Anne and Sue had been close friends since the dawn of time, Sylvie was their object of detestation and it was only through her association with Daisy that they'd even allowed her into the building. As for what they thought of Jewel, Anne was too much of a cynical nihilist to really have any active feelings about anybody (apart from Sue perhaps – but that friendship seemed to spring more from a social survival instinct than anything else), but Sue was a different matter. For Sue, the holy grail of teen life was popularity and since her arrival at Bray Wood she had ruthlessly strove to attain it. However, though immaculately well-groomed, she was not particularly beautiful and her social status stubbornly remained at the semi-popular level, which to Sue was synonymous with abject failure. Jewel on the other hand had everything Sue aspired to, though unlike Sue she did not equate social prestige with self-worth, although occasionally she couldn't resist basking in her popularity.

However the old adage 'popularity breeds contempt' was always something Jewel was acutely conscious of and now she wondered whether it would hold true with Sue in regards to her; would Sue be liable to harbour a grudge against her out of baseless jealousy?

No – she mustn't think like that. Optimism and trust were vital right now unless the group wanted to cave in on itself, even though Daisy would be an adroit peacemaker if the worst came to the worst.

Daisy Donahue; a girl best described as Bray Wood's most prominent social anomaly. Despite being extremely popular she was neither affiliated with either the Bitches or the Beauties, nor was she a self-impressed primadonna, instead she was simply an attractive and amiable girl. That wasn't to say she didn't have her moments of vanity, bitchiness and egoism – as Jewel well knew, even the 'good' type of popularity required a certain modicum of callousness to uphold – but these indiscretions notwithstanding, she still remained, by and large, a decent and genuine kind of person.

The bedroom was lavishly decorated – almost to the point of being excessively grandiose – with a spacious four-poster bed, pink silken sheets, a soft beige carpet and the most extravagantly floral wallpaper Jewel had ever seen. Jewel approached the en-suite bathroom; it was similarly grand, with marble tiling and mock-gold taps. Jewel felt suffocated by the overpowering opulence of excess, it was too pretentious for words and had a bizarrely constricting effect on her as she hurriedly turned the tap on, relieved by the warm spurt of water that splashed across her outstretched palms. She brought the glisteningly transparent pool in her hands towards her face, revitalised by the delicate touch of water against her cheeks.

Jewel retrieved a comb from her pocket and began to tenderly brush her sleek black hair. She was not oblivious to the vague irrationality of this ritual; time was now precious, should it really be spent doing facile things such as brushing one's hair? Jewel looked intensely at her face. Well, at the very least she still looked great; mercifully not particularly ravaged despite her unfortunate encounter with Phil Argyle. As far as Jewel was concerned, if she was going to die she was, at the very least, going to die beautiful.

"Jewel and Daisy, get the fuck back in here now!" screamed Sue from the living room.

Jewel sprinted out of the bedroom into the corridor, nearly colliding with the equally hasty Daisy on the way.

"We're not being attacked are we?" Daisy whispered frantically.

"Bloody hell, I hope not." Jewel answered.

* * *

The shrill ring of the alarm woke Anthony Stapleton (Boy #6) from a self-absorbed reverie. Saul Emerson (Boy #13) grabbed his Colt 357. revolver from the dining table and rushed over to the nearest of the cottage's windows, beneath which Jeremy Callaghan (Boy #7) tremblingly squatted.

"Anthony, sit your fat arse down on the floor _now_!" hissed Saul, warily peeking over the windowsill, before quickly ducking down again.

Anthony rolled his eyes and levered himself off his seat, taking up a hiding place beneath the table. Sure he was - for lack of a more flattering euphemism - _fat_, he'd never been anything else as far as his memory could tell him, however it was the punishing exam revision schedule he'd forced upon himself several months beforehand that had caused his food intake (and consequently his girth) to outright balloon in size. And now he was in a game where anything less than an Adonis physique was dismally inadequate and almost guaranteed to lead to certain death – why, he asked himself, had he not simply taken his own life to save others the bother and spare himself a potentially painful demise?

But he already knew the answer to that question: firstly, he hadn't been the recipient of a weapon that could be used offensively - he'd been given four small black proximity sensors, each of which possessed a detection radius of approximately twenty five metres, were no more than an inch in length and half an inch in width and had a conveniently placed plug on the end to stick them into the ground. There was also a slim rectangular monitor that accompanied the sensors, which emitted a cacophonous alarm wail if anybody strayed into the sensor's scope of detection.

Secondly, Jeremy and Saul had rendezvoused with Anthony before grimly suicidal conjectures could even penetrate his frailly calibrated mind and in next to no time the three of them had settled themselves within the confines of the cottage; the four proximity sensors placed at each corner, an impregnable defence line that gave them a satisfactory quantity of assurance. At Bray Wood they had been dubbed - by Frankie unsurprisingly - 'the freak clique,' a sobriquet that had dogged them for the entire duration of their three years spent at the school. Anthony was moderately tall, though seemed smaller because of his large width, with eternally untidy ginger hair and comically large spectacles that he wore solely because he feared the idea of sticking contact lenses in his eyes. By contrast, Jeremy Callaghan was Anthony's physical polar opposite, standing at well over six feet and with an unmistakably gangly frame. Saul Emerson would have perhaps been quite handsome were it not for the permanent scar that ran from the right hand corner of his forehead across the bridge of his nose and all the way down onto his left cheek. He'd obtained the scar as an infant, in a particularly serious accident that had resulted in the death of his older sister, an event he refused to talk about in even the smallest of details (Anthony suspected it had been an automobile crash, though he wasn't entirely sure). Together, these three disparate and marginalised students found the acceptance their 'socially superior' peers had denied them, though the fact that they had managed this small accomplishment only seemed to have increased the acrimony of the other pupils and the level of taunts they underwent dramatically increased.

And now they sat huddled and afraid in the cottage's economically sized kitchenette, as the figure approached the building.

"Is it male or female?" whispered Anthony.

"It's a boy...or it could be a girl," Saul vaguely asserted. There was a painstakingly slow creak as the front door was cautiously pushed forward by the mystery intruder. Guarded footsteps against the hall's bare wooden floor were indistinctly heard, Saul got to his feet, pistol clutched firmly in his outstretched hands. The Kitchen door swung open; instinctively Saul fired two shots at the top of the door frame which ricocheted off towards the ceiling, whilst his intended target dropped to the floor with a high-pitched scream of panic.

"What the..._fuck_ are you doing here?" Saul spat as the trespasser's true identity was revealed.

Liz Dunn (Girl #6) sat in a heap on the floor, reams of crocodile tears streaking down her face.

"Please don't hurt me," she wept theatrically, "I was just looking for shelter; I don't mean any harm I swear."

A diffusion of pointed and hurtful memories seized Anthony's mind; Liz leaning against a wall, unleashing a tirade of insults against him; "pig", "fat ass", "who has the bigger tits me or you?" "is it a glandular dysfunction or can you just not regulate your appetite?", whilst Frankie rocked back and forward guffawing with mirth, Jewel looking somewhat disapprovingly at her, but giggling covertly nonetheless.

"What's your weapon?" demanded Saul. Liz weakly tossed her water pistol towards him, her sobbing still in full force. Jeremy felt curiously sorry for her; he wasn't used to seeing a girl like Liz in such a wretched state and he intuitively felt the need to offer her sympathy and support, even if she was an absolute – and self-confessed - mega-bitch. Despite allegations by his schoolmates to the contrary, Saul did not have a heart composed of stone and he too found himself reasonably convinced by Liz's apparently genuine demonstration of terror. Anthony remained unmoved; Liz was a deceiver, a manipulator and a remorseless social-climber, with an innate ability to latch onto others and exploit them for her own ends.

"Ok Liz, this cottage becomes a danger zone in a few hours, so we'll be leaving soon. No offence, but I can assure you we _won't_ be taking you with us. However, in the meantime...I _suppose_ it's alright if you stay here, as long as you let us keep your weapon until we leave."

Anthony looked doubtfully at Saul; after all the cruel barbs she had uttered about his deformity, he was willing to go out on a limb and not only help her but also _trust_ her? For the first time, Anthony wished that his friend was just a little less humanely inclined. Saul looked defiantly back at Anthony, unfortunately missing the brief flitter of a smile that crossed Liz's tear streamed face as her diabolical plan kicked into action.

* * *

The girls sat rigidly on the sofas, transfixed by the events that were transpiring before there very eyes on the television. An anodyne blonde news presenter sat upright in her chair, relaying the details of what had occurred in a studiedly posh English accent, sporadically pouting with her voluptuous lips and generally trying to be sexually alluring in spite of the morbidity of the news.

"_In breaking news, the government announced, in the early hours of this morning, the introduction of the notorious Battle Royale act, despite its earlier claims that it would not descend to the level of instituting a law that essentially constituted – as one former MP described it – 'primordial savagery'. Of the thirty two students selected from Bray Wood preparatory school, five are reportedly already deceased. Approximately 32 million viewers are estimated to have paid to view the game via cable TV and already outspoken left wing activists are criticising the government for endorsing what they describe as 'excessively cruel brutality against the youth of today'."_

"_A few hours ago, fifty four adolescents threw themselves in front of an oncoming train at Cannon Street station, in a mass-suicidal protestation against the Battle Royale act. A spokesperson for Oxford University's student's union has condemned the government for its decision to instate the BR act and has incited fellow teenagers to demonstrate their outrage in the form of riots and other violent tactics. The individual in question – Brian Johnson – is currently in police custody for questioning about his suspected participation in the drug smuggling underworld."_

"_The government has defended its decision with examples of the rapidly increasing juvenile behavioural aberrancy; citing incidents such as the Embankment tube station bombing and the recent armed siege of Harrods shopping centre as proof that this dramatic and destructive law was most certainly justified. We'll be hearing both sides of the argument from government representatives and liberal political critics later, however now we go to a BBC exclusive interview with the parent of one of the (still living) pupils involved in the battle, this..."_

"I don't think I can take anymore of this," said Jewel, "can they be anymore exploitative – why don't they actually do something decisive rather than just conducting useless interviews?"

"Fifty four teenagers just committed suicide by being mowed down by a train – I'd call that pretty decisive, wouldn't you?" said Daisy, clearly still in shock. Jewel stood up and walked away towards the Kitchen window, gazing longingly at the outside sprawling landscape, a temporary thrill of escapism amidst the dirge of fear.

"Jewel," said Daisy with awed quietness, "it's your mother."

Jewel quickly turned to see her mother's stoic face plastered across the TV screen, bearing the same impassive expression she'd always feigned after her husband had finished a session of beating her.

Had Jewel looked at the window for a second longer, she would have seen the stocky figure of a male eavesdropper silently sneak away from the log cabin, having heard everything he could have possibly wanted to know.

27 Students Remain.


	10. Hour 8: 27 Students Remain

Day 1 7:00 AM

There was a particularly pungent – and suspiciously canine – aroma in the air when Ben Ackart (Boy #8) awakened. He hastily sat up, but quickly regretted it as he knocked his already aching head against what felt like a wooden ceiling. Startled and bewildered he looked around him, discovering that he was seated in what appeared to be a disagreeably musty and cramped shed, the only exit being the arch-shaped hole at the front. Oh shit, was this...

"Am I in a dog kennel?" Ben said aloud, aware of just how absurdly bizarre the sentence sounded as he uttered it.

"I'm afraid so, but don't worry; I'm fairly confident its previous owner won't be too bothered by your presence in it." The voice was female and rather prissy. An amiably grinning face appeared in the entranceway, "would you like a hand getting out?"

Ben looked inquisitively at the cute features of Cassandra Douglas (Girl #8) as she casually brushed back a handful of brunette curls from her pretty visage and willingly extended her hand to him. Carefully, Ben took it, dazzled by the gloriously bright azure of the sky as he was pulled out into the sunlight, the ocean-spray tinged air blissfully fresh and curiously intoxicating. He turned to speak to Cassandra, but she observantly anticipated this and quickly spoke first.

"Ok Ben, I'm guessing you've got a lot of questions you want to ask – let's sit down shall we, this could take awhile."

They stood in a circular clearing amidst the forest, a makeshift camp fire was rapidly dwindling in the ocean breeze and several large rocks had been set up to act as chairs. Ben and Cassandra uncomfortably seated themselves on these jaggedly shaped lumps of stone, Ben still feeling as though his fragile brain was being incessantly pummelled by countless pneumatic drills and bitterly wishing he'd not clumsily forgotten to bring some aspirin tablets along with him on this 'geography field trip'. Ben put a hand to his throbbing forehead and, to his surprise, discovered a recently applied plaster stuck pertly on the upper-right hand side of his brow.

"What..." he began, only to be interrupted by the excitable Cassandra.

"Well, Nicole and David Colville and I all united together outside the HQ and we ran off into the woods – we're all very pacifistic by the way so you needn't worry about your safety – and we...well it was really weird actually; we thought we saw you running through the woods and David insisted we follow – Nicole, I have to admit, wasn't too pleased about that – and eventually we found you sprawled on the ground, seriously concussed and really vulnerable. So David decided we should do the humane thing and take care of you; we found this dog kennel – which isn't marked on the map by the way – and laid you inside it. We've been doing guard shifts and that's...about it I suppose."

Ben smiled ever so slightly. Cassandra was a proud member of the 'Beauties', somewhat hyperactive, occasionally garrulous to the point of annoyance and, most fundamentally of all, a die-hard gossip. However – contradictory as it might sound – though Cassandra continuously jabbered away about every shred of rumour and potential scandal she'd come across with her preternatural ability to snuff out even the most recent of gossip, unlike most of her elitist compatriots, she never intended to utilise the information she garnered with malicious intent. She simply thought it made good conversation. She occupied the enviable position of Nicole Colville's 'lieutenant' (i.e. dependable partner-in-crime) and was even the trophy girlfriend of the most desired boy in the year; David Colville – Nicole's brother – with whom she was obviously besotted. Yes, she was a saccharine romantic, candy manifested in human form – ephemerally sweet and quickly disposable once the flavour had dulled; Ben wondered whether or not David _actually_ felt anything for her or if it was simply primal animal lust and the need for keeping up appearances that had driven the two together. No that wasn't fair he realised; David was kind and decent and unlike most of the sport-playing Neanderthals he actually didn't beat his underlings and hence he was deservedly reputed to be something of a softie at heart.

"Where did this plaster come from?" asked Ben, gesturing to the said dressing.

"You've Nicole to thank for that – there's another one on your shoulder by the way – she recently bought some new shoes which look _incredible_, but unfortunately don't fit properly and have been giving her really bad blisters; so she's been wearing plasters on her heels for like a month to prevent this. You must have cut your head on a rock when you fell and – luckily for you – that bullet only scraped your shoulder's flesh, so these plasters will be good enough for now at any rate."

"So, just exactly what were you going to do with me?"

Cassandra bit her lip as her face flushed red ever so slightly; when she spoke her formerly ebullient voice was sombre, "Well...to tell you the truth, we sort of agreed that if by midday you hadn't woken up we'd...umm, shoot you." Seeing Ben's expression of mortified revulsion, Cassandra quickly explained, "It's not that we wanted to or anything, but for all we knew, you could have been irretrievably comatose – in which case the best thing we could do for you would be to give you a quick death...and then we'd take your supplies. Look, none of us wanted to hurt you...but, well things are pretty frightening right now and we didn't know what to do."

"So tell me Cassandra, just what equipment have I been given?" Ben curtly enquired.

"I've no idea...we didn't want to see what weapon you'd been given, just in case we...got tempted, if you get my gist." Cassandra hesitantly explained.

"And where are the venerated Nicole and David now then? Did they leave because they were afraid that if they stayed too near me, they might get _tempted_?" Ben was still speaking in deadpan monotone.

"No, Nicole and David are patrolling the area; they said they also needed some time to themselves to 'discuss some private matters'." Cassandra answered simply.

"Private matters which aren't of concern to you then?" Ben coyly suggested.

"I trust them both completely. Come on Ben; be thankful we saved your life rather than moaning..."

"I'm sorry Cassandra, it's just that..." but Ben didn't finish his sentence, because at that moment, the elusive sense of pain and worry that had glided ethereally around the back of his mind since he had woken up, came roaring into the forefront of his psyche. The shots, the blood, the desperate grasp of his hand and the helplessly pleading look in his eyes. Nate. His name would forever be imprinted upon Ben's memory, ingrained, immovable and endless.

"Oh Jesus..." gasped Ben as he clutched his hands to his eyes.

* * *

In the all-encompassing darkness of his bedroom, only the TV's flickering picture provided any illumination, the blurred swirls of colour casting a single beam of subdued light across the bare wooden floor. Mr. Samuels carelessly flicked the ash from his cigar, concentrating on the image of Mrs. Siu Tung, her stony and emotionless stare having a curiously magnetic effect on his weary eyes.

A brunette news reporter - moderately attractive despite having a face pumped full of botox and collagen – held the microphone out towards the expressionless Mrs. Siu Tung, an insincere look of concern adorning her surgically enhanced face.

"_Mrs. Siu Tung,_ _obviously your only daughter, Jewel, is amongst the 27 remaining participants within the first Battle Royale. In this situation, where do your loyalties lie; do you accept the government's reasoning behind their justification for passing this severe law? Or have you chosen to align yourself with the raucous hooligans that purport to be the morally 'superior' opposition?" _The news reporter asked in a soothingly dulcet and obviously contrived tone.

Mrs. Siu Tung glared at her with unconcealed disgust; a truly menacing glower that Jewel was very proud to have inherited, "_Of course I oppose the government; what useless excuse of a parent wouldn't in this situation?"_ Mrs. Siu Tung's voice was clipped and disdainful, remnants of her Asian accent still audible despite her perfect English.

"_But surely Mrs. Siu Tung, you wouldn't deny that there have been serious problems with the youth and that measures are needed to quell this pattern of Juvenile behavioural aberrancy?"_

"_Institutionalised slaughter is not the answer; how the government dares to condone this kind of program is quite beyond me – this is sick, the people who created it are sick, the depraved perverts that watch this are sick and..."_

"_Mrs. Siu Tung," _the reporter quickly butted in, a slightly nervous look flashing across her face, _"right now, do you have anything you'd like to say to Jewel?"_

There was an unconscionable pause. Suddenly Mrs. Siu Tung lunged towards the camera, roughly pushing aside the gob smacked reporter who tumbled backward with a faint yelp of shock.

"_How can you do this, you heartless fuckers? Because of scum like you, **my daughter is probably going to die! Can you understand that? Can you get it through your thick skulls that beyond all this bureaucratic crap MY CHILD AND HER FRIENDS ARE BEING SENT TO THEIR DEATHS?" **_Mrs Siu Tung's voice had risen to hoarse screech; two security guards emerged from the sides, each seizing one of the now weeping Mrs. Siu Tung's arms and angrily dragging her away, the heels of her shoes creating a gratingly shrill sound as they skidded across the concrete floor.

Bored, Mr Samuels picked up the remote control and switched the television off. He took another small sip of his brandy, the dry heat of his sore throat cooling as the liquid ran down his gullet, a gentle river of momentary of revitalisation before the arid pain returned. He flicked the desk lamp switch on, pleased by the small scope of light it radiated in the pitch black of the room. He removed his wallet from his jacket pocket and hesitantly opened it; it'd been almost a week since he'd last looked at the photo and he felt a slight spasm of guilt as he unfurled the square of leather that contained the most important of his possessions.

That sweet and earnest smile, the hair that was done in pigtails despite her distaste for the style, because she so eagerly wanted to please him and those long woollen sleeves of her cardigan that hid the fine white marks from where she'd cut herself with a penknife. Mr. Samuels looked down at the static picture of his daughter, Suzanne - as his wife had insisted upon christening her; he'd have preferred Rose to have been her given name, but back in those days he'd been much more submissive and malleable to the demands of others.

But only two years after giving birth to Suzanne; Mr Samuels's wife lay dead on a mortuary slab, the victim of a hit and run driver. Of course there had been the interminable period of grieving, but Mr. Samuels was resolute that life _would_ go on and he continued to jet around the world on an assortment of dull business trips, always leaving Suzanne in the care of a barely literate European au pair.

He'd showered Suzanne with gifts of course, sure that these would in some way compensate for his continual absence in her life. She'd graciously accepted them but never felt any way of talking to him about her sufferings at school. Perhaps it was her lack of a mother that had made her susceptible to hurt; she never felt as though there was a true anchor in her home life, just a series of chain-smoking nannies with slightly amusing accents. Though she was not beautiful (the good-looks gene didn't really run in Mr Samuels's line of the family), she was slim, small and fairly pretty but unequivocally shy and timid. With a frightening – almost primeval – instinct, her female classmates sensed her innate vulnerability and soon the torment had begun.

I haven't really the heart to recount the vile things they did to her; the tirade of abuse she endured, the public humiliations on the sports pitch, the dining hall and even the classrooms. She was normal but branded a 'freak', she was straight but stigmatised as a 'lesbian', she was quite cute but derided as 'ugly' and she was kind but damned as a 'bitch'. There was no logic in these slurs, but that wasn't an issue for those who perpetrated them.

He'd returned home from work at the usual time, the au pair now asleep in bed after imbibing her customary nightcap of two shots of vodka, and found her creakily swaying from left to right in the kitchen doorway; a tattered and tear-stained note beneath her, the noose still tight around her neck. The note may have been incomplete, but it still provided Mr. Samuels with a lucid account of her pain; the bottomless pit of anguish and despair that she'd refused to share with him until now. But now was too late.

From that moment on he'd felt an irrepressible hatred that could not be quashed; a hatred for the young. Now was his chance, perhaps his only one, to silence his demons and give Suzanne some vengeful closure; the selected class may not be the one who'd driven her over the edge and into the deep, but that was unimportant – all kids were the same; selfish and unruly scum.

He held the photo tightly, making no effort to wipe away the tear that rolled down his cheek with ghostly quiet.

* * *

"What did you get in the way of weapons then?" asked Ben, his surge of emotion having more or less rescinded by now.

"This," said Cassandra, picking up a silver plated Smith and Wesson 357. revolver, "David got the same model but his was coloured black – I mean how freakily cool; it's like we're a couple even in weapons! Nicole got given six grenades, which between you and me, I don't believe she was very pleased with – I think she quite fancied the idea of running around in a short skirt, toting a gun à la La Femme Nikita." Cassandra giggled with strangely inappropriate girly innocence and continued to ramble on, "I just can't wait to get off this island and get back to all the things I'll have missed - I'm going to have a nice bubble bath first and then indulge in some Belgian chocolates I think."

"But how are you going to get off the island unless you..."

"Well I'm sure Nicole will think of something," Cassandra brusquely interrupted, "she's very enterprising and always has a plan whenever there's trouble. Anyway; aren't you going to check your bag?"

Keen to divert attention away from the prospect of probably having to kill others, Ben acquiesced to Cassandra's demand and withdrew his weapon from the satchel he'd been given. It was plastic and rectangular, with a plasma screen and a large number of small and densely packed buttons.

""GPS Globular positional interface, model C57 hand-held palmtop"" Ben read aloud from the manual's cover page, "pity they tore out most of the pages from the operating manual; I'll just have figure out how to use it by guesswork I suppose."

"Did you really expect them to be anything other than total fuckers?" Cassandra muttered to herself.

Ben ignored this jibe and continued to press away on the palmtop's array of buttons, trying to activate it and figure out the location of Simon and Joanna. There was a rustling amongst the bushes beyond the circle of the clearing; Cassandra raised her revolver and held it tautly in her arms.

"We need to give him more time, he could still recover," said a voice in the distance. Cassandra slackened her aim and relaxed onto one of the rocks, reassured by the sound of David Colville's (Boy #12) gruffly charming voice.

"Look, he's probably in gaga-land having really sordid bacchanalian orgies and has no chance of ever waking up again. If you're too pussy; I'll do it, but what's really bugging...Oh, hi Ben." Nicole Colville (Girl #7) quickly changed tact and smiled sweetly, "how are you feeling?"

"Fine thank you, though sadly when I was in 'gaga-land', I didn't get the opportunity to fuck anybody – but hey there's still time for that, or is there?" Ben tartly answered, Nicole didn't bat an eyelid but Cassandra and David looked slightly perturbed.

"So you're feeling ok mate?" David asked with, as far as Ben could tell, authentic empathy.

Ben nodded slightly. Though there was a strong resemblance between the two, David and Nicole were allegedly not actual twins, one of them having been adopted by the Colville parents as an infant. Despite their reticence on the subject, Ben was fairly convinced that David was the adoptee; whilst Nicole spoke with a finely-tuned, plummy English accent, David's vocal intonations were more northern and working class. For this reason Liz Dunn had gossiped that David was the child of a broken home and though these rumours were never confirmed, speculation about David's history obstinately refused to cease. They were attractive kids; Nicole's shoulder length brunette hair and fuller body shape were her principal physical features that differentiated her from Frankie, otherwise they looked remarkably similar; same perfect bone structure, same luscious lips and same angular facial shape – though Frankie's eyes were larger and more striking. These similarities went unacknowledged by the two divas; it wasn't as though it was difficult to tell them apart, but their beauty was of a comparable genre though it was an unwise gaff to point this out to either of them. David's rugged looks could generally be relied upon to cause multitudes of females to swoon with yearning, whilst his talent for sports and remarkable brain gave him an air of all-round perfection. Ben continued to tap away on the keys of his GPS tracker, presciently predicting that the discovery he was edging ever closer to would be one of seismic importance.

"Have a good chat?" asked Cassandra, a hint of bitterness detectable in her voice.

"Very stimulating," Nicole said dryly, "we're trying to figure out our options, or lack of them to be more exact."

"You must be able to think of _something_?" Cassandra said with unmasked desperation.

"Unfortunately not – and neither can David, despite his claims to the contrary." There was such bite in her voice that even Ben promptly looked up from his palmtop, suspecting that the 'conversation' the two had earlier was more akin to an argument than an agreeable discourse.

"I'll think of something...there's always something that can be undermined to your benefit. Have you conjured up any good ideas Ben?" there was faint sarcasm in the question, but Ben looked up and answered with complete seriousness,

"Yes, but we need to go to the temple to get things started," seeing their bemusement, Ben cogently asserted, "_now_."

27 Students Remaining


	11. Hour 9: 27 Students Remain

Day 1 8:02 AM

Beneath the sterilely pure bathroom light, Sylvie Becker (Girl #15) agitatedly wept. She looked again at the cardboard packaging, re-reading the finely printed blue instructions; trying to calculate how much longer it would be...

Sylvie jumped slightly as Daisy Donahue (Girl #4) rapped sharply against the door for the umpteenth time.

"_Please_ Sylvie, you can't stay cooped up in there forever, so come on out now," Daisy soothingly entreated, "we're making preparations to leave; _please _come and join us."

Sylvie ignored these pleas and continued to stare fixedly at the tube she held in her hand. How long – thirty minutes, an hour? The agony of needing to be patient was almost unbearable and the pessimistic speculation that was continually running through her mind only exacerbated this frustration.

She cast her mind back to where it had all started, the reason why she was now up to her eyes in shit. Though that _American_ girl Joanna had insisted upon referring to it as a 'prom', the rest of the school collectively knew it as the 'annual disco', a celebration in honour of the student's completion of their exams. They were never exactly wild events; no booze, no drugs and most importantly of all, _no_ sex, but the festive mood amongst the students – always prevalent once exams had been finished – ensured these parties would at the very least be memorable.

'Memorable'? A sour understatement for Sylvie, a more appropriate description of what transpired amid the swaying bodies and inebriated giggles would be 'life-altering'.

She'd had a lovers' spat a couple of days beforehand; not an argument over anything significant, just a petty squabble that had somehow escalated into a fully-fledged shouting match that quickly drove a rift of jealousy between the two of them. At the disco, each of them had stood on opposite sides of the gym, pretending to enjoy the company of the various boys and girls in their vicinity, whilst cautiously sneaking surreptitious glances of longing at one another.

Sylvie had already downed a few too many bottles of Jack Daniels (courtesy of Tian Berkley), so when Daniel Swane suavely approached her and suggestively whispered those sweet words in her ear, she was mere putty in his hands. He'd led her into a nearby corridor and pressed her against the wall, excitedly hitching her legs apart and then...

Sylvie cringed at the memory. She hadn't been as drunk as she liked to imagine; she'd gone with Daniel on something of a whim, eager in her intoxicated state to cruelly spite her true love by being with somebody else. At first it had even been pleasurable, a novel and stimulating experience that for a moment enthralled her. But then...it became gynaecological and painful; an emotionless rhythm of ululating whilst she remained more or less in a detached alcoholic torpor.

Daniel had left her in the corridor; opting to slink back off to the party rather than stay with her, presumable wishing to satiate his whetted sexual appetite with another unfortunate girl. Sylvie wearily returned to her dorm, only to discover her true love already there, seated on the bed with an expression of appeasing affection. It turned from a night of torment into one of blissful reconciliation; Sylvie never spoke of her tryst with Daniel to anyone, she regarded her brief moment of wayward judgement to be nothing more than inconsequential history now.

Or so she thought.

She was late. Sylvie was a punctual person in every aspect of life and to her this errant lateness was inexplicable – a spoke in her menstrual cycle perhaps? No, she suspected otherwise. The day before the departure of the geography field trip, Sylvie had skipped the morning chapel service – risking a severe reprimand in doing so – and snuck into town to go to the chemists and procure a pregnancy test. She'd succeeded in this task, but the fraught preparation for the trip and the constant presence of her love made it a nigh on impossible for her to actually use her purchase to find out whether or not she truly was pregnant.

She looked at the tube; the result was finally coming through...

Daisy again hammered away at the door and uttered more appeals for her to leave. Sylvie sighed, stood up from the toilet seat and approached the mirror. She washed her face to remove the tear streaked mascara that blemished her cheeks and carefully brushed her dishevelled strawberry-blonde hair, before finally advancing towards the bathroom door and apprehensively opening the lock. Sylvie stepped back as Daisy guardedly pushed the door open. For an imperceptible moment they stood and stared at each other, in an instant Daisy rushed forward and threw her arms around Sylvie and kissed her on the lips. It was a long, slow, greedy and voluptuous kiss that Sylvie had experienced many times, but one that she now felt too numb with panic to really enjoy.

"I've been so worried about you," sobbed Daisy "I thought that you might have...God I can't even bring myself to say it."

"I'm alright," Sylvie mumbled in return "just been frightened that's all."

"I love you," Daisy quietly said with absolute sincerity.

Sylvie knew she should have been thankful; she still had Daisy and could even expect to spend the last few days of her life in her company (She suspected that Ben – amongst others – would not be receiving this privilege of spending the last hours of one's life with a loved one), and yet that somehow wasn't enough for her. The night she'd carelessly spent with Daniel had taken its toll on her; though initially she pretended otherwise, she knew that a flame of her passion for Daisy had been extinguished and was doubtful that it could ever be rekindled. It was probably because of the overwhelming guilt and self-recriminations she'd gone through, or maybe it had something to do with the secrecy her love required. She was losing the will to keep going, was it worth the effort to stay alive? Yes it was, and not for selfish reasons either. Maybe the BR admin would be willing to make exceptions given her unique circumstance? Perhaps not...

"I love you too," Sylvie replied, but though it was the complete truth, it offered her surprisingly little assurance and she still felt hopelessly lost and desperate.

* * *

Anthony Stapleton (Boy #6) lethargically draped himself over the sofa's armrest. He was tired, he'd had plenty of sleep but he was still insufferably shattered from all the stress, which had only been worsened by _her_ arrival. Liz Dunn (Girl #6) was nowhere in sight, a fact that was causing Anthony considerable grief; Saul Emerson (Boy #13) had left the cottage to scout the area and check what was wrong with the proximity sensors (which had recently ceased to function properly) whilst Jeremy Callaghan (Boy #7), complaining about being afflicted with particularly painful stomach cramps, had locked himself in the cottage's one toilet. Anthony's single source of consolation was Liz's pistol; he at least felt a degree of comfort in knowing that he had a gun, but still, Liz was one mean girl to say the least and who knew what she might...

There was a slight creak as the door connecting the living room to the kitchen was shoved open. Anthony roused himself from his slothful daydreaming to see Liz stride into the room, a mug in each hand, vaporous steam rising from the liquids' dark surfaces and a richly appetizing scent of chocolate filling the room.

"I brought some hot chocolate with me in my bag," she said genially, "I thought you might like to have some?"

"That depends what it's spiked with?" Anthony curtly retorted, though he could already sense himself yielding.

"Nothing, how could you think I would do a thing like that?"

Anthony raised his eyebrows. Liz huffed slightly and set a mug of the steaming hot chocolate down on the coffee table.

"Well, if you want it, it's there – I promise I didn't load it with anything other than milk, water and chocolate powder." Liz tartly informed him, "I'm surprised at you Anthony; I'd of thought that you of all people would have wanted to try and get along, rather than make baseless accusations when I'm only trying to do something kind."

Anthony looked at the hot chocolate (licking his lips involuntarily as he did so) and then at Jeremy's small bottle of powdered cyanide, which was also stood on the table, and seeing that it was full and obviously untouched, picked up the cup and took a long single swig of the sweltering chocolate.

It was delicious; moist, creamy, sensual, a sublime tickling of his taste buds, but then...something else, it was prickly, constricting, parched and choking. He began to splutter as he fell onto the floor, gasping for breath as his vision, doubled, tripled, blurred and finally retuned to normal as he clawed for Liz's pistol.

"You bitch!" he coughed, "what the fuck did you put in it?"

Liz smiled nastily, "I found some diesel in the cottage garage – though no car unfortunately – and mixed it in with your hot chocolate, I knew you wouldn't be able to resist. Though just think about it; if you weren't such a complete chocoholic you might have stood a better chance of surviving – I suppose it goes to show that greed truly was the death of you and you've really nobody to blame but yourself for the painful demise you're about to suffer," she laughed cruelly, "I'm not actually sure how long the diesel will take to actually kill you, but luckily for you I'm going to do the charitable thing and quicken your death."

Anthony writhed on the floor, frantically attempting to scramble away from Liz and alert Jeremy of the danger that had now unveiled itself before his very eyes; the convulsions in his stomach were becoming ever more violently frequent and he was starting to cough up a grotesque mixture of bile and blood. Liz's pistol still lay idly on the table, he tried to snatch it, but Liz effortlessly moved it out of his reach.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but it's only a water pistol," she smirked evilly, "so you're going to have to give up any delusions about killing me."

Anthony's normally rosy and sanguineous face was now completely devoid of colour, apart from a faintly green tint, and he was finding movement of his limbs almost impossible, his senses anaesthetized by the torrid pain that encompassed his entire body. Liz unhurriedly reached for the cyanide and upon picking it up, slowly unscrewed the cap.

"Time to take your medicine Anthony, just like a good boy would. I'm not going to lie to you; this will taste gross and I can't give you any sugar to help you swallow it, but hey – that's what comes of being a naively trusting pig, you just have to take the rough with smooth. It's a real pity that you won't be around to see what I do to those other freaks who you regard as your friends; you've no idea how fucking poetic it's going to be!"

Anthony squirmed even more as Liz knelt down on his flabby chest, trying to fight her off but too weakened and sickly to do so. Liz snapped his head back against the ground with her right hand and pinched his nose with her left; emptying the rough powder down his throat, through his now open mouth. She stood up again, gleefully watching the sight of Anthony frenetically roll around on the floor whilst projectile vomit periodically spurted from his mouth. The ruckus of Anthony's continued maniacal tossing and turning lasted for a minute or two, before he finally laid motionless, entrails of saliva and vomit staining his mottled cheeks and the pale beige carpet.

For a few moments, Liz stood upright and basked in the tranquil sereneness that had befallen the room, a rare interlude of peace amidst the raucous sound of mayhem. She grinned; phase one had been completed without a hitch (though not without a sizeable amount of mess being made) and she was ready to kick-start phase two into action.

Liz stood silently for a moment, opened her mouth and with all the energy she could muster, let out a mind-bogglingly shrill scream and collapsed onto the sofa.

* * *

A kilometre or so away from the log cabin, another plan of action was gestating in the mind of its creator, as he calculated the finer aspects and went over the intricate details with typically determined precision.

"And you're sure you heard everything correctly?" Tian Berkley (Boy #1) asked with total conviction and seriousness.

"I am capable of hearing, you know!" Phil Argyle (Boy #15) tersely answered

"Yeah but not thinking, unfortunately," Fergal Mills (Boy #9) muttered to himself.

"Shut the fuck up you Irish cunt!" Phil shouted in return.

"Keep your voice down!" hissed an exasperated Tian, "we don't want to draw attention to ourselves!"

"Bit difficult not to with this idiot hanging around us," Fergal snarled.

"I'm warning you! Do you want me to rearrange your face?" spat Phil.

"Why? So it can look like yours?" Fergal smugly leered; Phil stood up and balled his fists but was promptly sat down again when Tian firmly yanked down on his left arm.

"Why are you so fucking hell-bent on getting at each others throats (in the figurative sense that is), we need to trust each other now. OK?" Tian crossly asserted, "What's the matter Fergal, I can tell your pissed off about something so what's the deal?"

"Why am I always the one who gets the shit weapon?" Fergal moodily answered. Phil had been awarded an MP5 for his 'innovative' killing of Fei Yan and hence Fergal had been the recipient of Fei's Beretta M92F pistol whilst Phil and Tian continued to posses the superior firepower, much to Fergal's chagrin.

"Look; when we confront Sue and her gang, you'll get her Uzi and Phil will 'get' Jewel, alright?" said Tian.

"As if I could ever say no to an Uzi," Fergal assured them.

"It's just 'boys with toys' with you isn't it?" said Phil.

"And I suppose your 'toy' is Jewel?" retorted Fergal.

"What can I say; I need something to play with," Phil sharply replied.

"I wouldn't get your hopes up; Jewel's probably a dyke just like her friend Sylvie, and even if she weren't I doubt she'd want to do anything of a carnal nature with _you_"

"Fuck you," laughed Phil, "Jewel's not a lesbo, you can tell she's straight by the way she looks at guys with obvious interest. And where did you come by this info that Sylvie likes girls exactly?"

"Well I doubt Jewel _looks_ at you very often; unless she's bulimic and needs visual assistance to help her puke up her food." Fergal said with his characteristically well-honed slyness, "And it's Tian who told me about Sylvie's 'preferences'."

"And it was Daniel who told me," said Tian, clearly bored by the conversation, "and before you ask, the reason he apparently knew all this was because he claims to have nailed her at the disco but she didn't seem to have much in the way of a pleasurable reaction. He was a bit worried about it, even upset..."

"Well it's not as if Daniel's the most irresistible of people. He also probably just hasn't grasped the proper methods you need to master if you wanna make a girl come like nothing you've seen before." Phil let out a throaty chortle and took another sip of his beer – Tian refused on principle to travel anywhere without a six-pack of some variety of alcohol.

"You speak from experience?" asked Tian.

"Perhaps," Phil replied coyly.

"I didn't realise that an oversized lump of cheese could be a Lothario," sniggered Fergal, "but I guess there are many things I have yet to learn about the world in which we live."

Phil looked as though he was about to imminently make a scathing riposte to this slight, but Tian quickly interrupted again,

"For fuck's sake stop bitching you two and listen up – we have better things to be talking about than which way Sylvie Becker is sexually inclined. From what Phil's said, we know they're going to the infirmary, they're well armed and there are five of them in number. I'd wager that they'll take the southern pathway rather than cross through the forest; they're probably thinking that because they've got automatic weapons and reasonable strength in numbers, they'll basically be invulnerable to attack. We are going to prove they're seriously fucking wrong in this respect."

"Where do we wait to attack from?" asked Fergal.

"I have a few ideas; I've also got some complex attack patterns that I'll need to go through with you."

"It's a shame Phil didn't listen in for longer; we might have at least got some more specific info if he had." Fergal mused bitterly.

"I had to leave; it would have been dangerous to linger there too long. Besides, I didn't see you offering to eavesdrop on the girls."

"If it weren't for me, we wouldn't have even found out where the girls hiding!" Fergal angrily replied.

"_Shut. The. Fuck. Up!_" Tian growled, forcefully subduing his mounting rage as best he could, "and let me finish."

There was silence, Phil and Fergal looked unusually cowed by Tian's anger. Tian cleared his throat and began his second attempt at an authoritative colloquy.

"As I was saying,"

* * *

The girls had finally packed their bags and gathered their weapons together. Originally they'd intended to leave the sanctuary of the log cabin as late as was feasibly possible, but the sneaking paranoia that the infirmary might already be occupied unless they left soon had driven them to make a prematurely early departure.

Jewel was visibly shaken, the televised interview with her mother having left in her in an emotionally distraught state that only Daisy and – to a lesser extent – Sylvie, had tried to alleviate. Daisy was positively elated by Sylvie's exit from her hideaway and this joy was clearly manifesting itself in her giddily optimistic mood. Even Sylvie had lightened up and relaxed slightly, whilst Anne and Sue retained their patented demeanours of cool indifference.

Little did Jewel realise, as she exited the comfort of the log cabin and stepped out into the foreboding woodland, what fate awaited her and her friends amongst the dense and mysterious greenery of the forest.

Either way, the events that would emerge over the course of the next few hours would leave their indelible mark on every person involved.

26 Students Remaining


	12. Hour 10: 26 Students Remain

Day 1 9:00 AM

For Liz Dunn (who a few years later would be commonly known across the nation as Girl #6) it had seemingly been nothing more than a typical Saturday morning. She'd perched herself on her favourite park bench, resigned – as usual - to the prospect of whiling away the hours in abject boredom; having no friends or any sort of material entertainment to distract her. She was dressed entirely in black. This was not intended to be a fashion statement (she was far too young to be infatuated with the idea of becoming a Goth) nor was it an attempt to derive attention from others – the sight of such a young girl dressed so morbidly was always a sure-fire method to turn heads – instead it was simply due to the ill-advised judgement of one person; her mother. She continually professed to be colour-blind and would always use this alleged disability as the excuse for her questionable decisions about her daughter's clothes, which proved to be the bane of her life as she was forced to suffer the ignominy of mocking glances and derisive whispering that occurred whenever she strayed into the sight-line of an especially arrogant passer-by.

Her mother was an indolent drunk, a washed out hippie who parasitically leeched off her swarthy estate-agent husband and spent her days smoking pot with a consortium of equally stoned chums from her 1960's heyday. She was carefree and work-shy, content to leave her daughter to her own devices; occasionally encouraging Liz to explore her 'spiritual creativity' but usually too hung-over or strung-out to act like the family's proper matriarch.

It was early – her watch stated the time to be half past eight. Mercifully the park was empty, apart from a handful for homeless paupers who lay asleep on several other benches, meaning that Liz could at least expect her first few hours of solitude to be blissfully serene and peaceful and free of unwanted interest from strangers.

Liz was startled when four figures strolled into the park; two blonde mothers, fashionably dressed, with expertly styled hair and a general appearance designed to disguise the onset of age, swaggered along whilst each of their pampered daughters ran ahead towards the swings. Both children were blonde, but whilst one was svelte and beautiful the other was rather dumpy and plain – though she compensated for her lack of good-looks by being loud and obnoxious in the childish sort of way that many adults found oddly endearing.

Frankie was tiring of having to put up with Hillary's disagreeable company and found herself intrigued by the small figure of a girl that sat hunched on a park bench. She estimated that they were of roughly the same age –eight years old to be precise- and was surprised to see so young a girl all by herself (Liz had to travel around alone, her parents obstinately refusing to take her anywhere), Frankie having always been taught that she was not to leave the house unaccompanied due to the risk of being abducted by perverts.

Despite Hilary's vociferous protestations, Frankie strolled over to the silent figure of Liz – Hilary sulkily tagging along – who looked up with vulnerable timidity.

Hilary's mother only briefly glanced up as the girls sauntered away from them, too ensconced in the gossip that Frankie's mother was fervently relaying to her to really take notice. In years to come, Hilary's mother would daily torment herself about her lack of intervention in these moments, wishing that she had somehow taken the initiative to call the two girls away from the secretly malicious enigma that had so intrigued them. Had she prevented them from ever meeting, she suspected that that wretched girl Liz would never have been able to wreak the kind of havoc on their lives that she ultimately did.

Liz looked bemusedly at the two girls in front of her. Hilary had furrowed her brow and was grimacing overtly, seemingly offended by the very sight of Liz. Frankie, by contrast, was entranced by the beguilingly unusual girl; she was so unlike the cosseted little princesses that her mother constantly selected to be friends for her 'little darling' and her atypical persona thoroughly fascinated the sheltered Frankie.

"Do you want to come and play with us?" asked Frankie, ignoring the way Hilary's jaw dropped in mortification at the mere suggestion of having to socialise with this weirdo.

"Sure," said Liz, giving an uncharacteristically genuine smile.

That was where it began. For Liz it was the most wonderful thing she could imagine; having ceaselessly been shunned at whatever school she attended, it was a uniquely fantastic experience to finally gain a close friend. But things were never so simple; there remained a single factor that impeded Liz's chances of becoming Frankie's closest companion, namely Hilary. Having always been taught in Maths that when an equation is uneven, the only viable course of action to solve it and obtain the desired answer is to balance out the equation's components, Liz concluded that she would apply this rule with Hilary, though in a much deadlier fashion.

At the age of ten, a few weeks before Christmas, Liz goaded Hilary into stepping onto the pond in Frankie's back garden. The snow had been constantly falling and the temperature was well below freezing, but the thin coating of ice that layered the pond was still too fragile to support the weight of Hilary. Liz had stood there with sadistic indifference and watched as Hilary thrashed about, desperately trying to escape the water, before finally succumbing to its superior power.

Hilary's mother had never liked nor trusted Liz and suspected that her involvement in the whole situation was far less innocent than Liz led others to believe. But there was nothing to incriminate her and the inquest determined that Hilary's death by drowning was a result of her own misjudgement and that though Liz had bravely attempted to rescue her she'd been unable to do so due to her inability to swim.

It may have been the first time that Liz violated one of the most fundamental laws of humanity, but as Liz watched the sight of Anthony flail and yelp in his last living moments with a sinister satisfaction, she knew it wouldn't be the last.

* * *

"I don't know how it happened!" Liz protested; her face lined with tear stains, "I just found him rolling about on the floor and vomiting, there wasn't anything I could do, I swear! I suppose he just couldn't take the pressure and so he overdosed on the cyanide, you know, a way to escape from the pain he was feeling – what Christopher decided to earlier...poor bastard."

The three of them were assembled in a semi-circle around the corpse of Anthony Stapleton. It was a surreal sight; each of their faces wanly gaunt, their eyes deadened with fatigue, all of them looking like wild-eyed devils incarnate, seemingly about to enact a pagan ritual upon the dead body that lay before them. Liz had managed to coax Jeremy Callaghan (Boy #7) from his bathroom retreat and fetched Saul Emerson (Boy #13) from his futile attempts at repairing the proximity sensors. Both now stood in front of the cadaver of their dearly departed friend, each bearing an expression of shell-shocked disbelief. Liz repressed a gloating smile; these two hapless fools were effortlessly playing into her hands. She'd sprinkled a smattering of cyanide into Jeremy's mug of coffee, not enough to kill him, but a satisfactory quantity guaranteed to mess up his innards and make him feel extremely unwell (the fact that a small amount was used also prevented Anthony from realising that any was missing). Breaking the proximity sensors had been a greater challenge, but as always Liz had found a way...

Jeremy looked even more sickly than beforehand; it was bad enough that the acid was eating away at his intestines, but the sight of his friend lying dead in a pool of his own vomit had really compounded his sickliness.

"Why should I believe you?" Jeremy rasped weakly, "it's not like you ever gave a fuck about Anthony...or any of us for that matter."

"How can you say that?" gasped Liz with expertly feigned horrified indignation.

"With ease," Jeremy retorted, choking again, "I personally think you're a liability that we can't afford to have around us – I've never trusted you; least of all now."

"Don't say that!" wailed Liz, crocodile tears welling up in her piggy little eyes.

"This area becomes a danger zone in just under an hour, let's try and figure out what happened without temper tantrums shall we?" Saul snapped.

"What the fuck are you talking about? 'Without temper tantrums' – our best friend's literally puked his guts out, _she's_ the most likely suspect and you don't even give a shit!" yelled Jeremy, his voice hoarse with anxiety.

"I seem to recall British law goes by the principle that everybody is innocent until proven guilty - there's no reason not to take into account Liz's recollection of what happened!"

"Why are you even listening to all the crap she's telling us?" Jeremy exasperatedly yelled, "Have you forgotten what she did to us? Have you somehow managed to exorcise the memory of finding all your textbooks with 'Scarface' scrawled all over them? Do you remember what she and her pack of bitches and sluts treated us like? Do you? Or were you too concerned with getting inside her panties that you just ignored every fucking thing she said to you!"

Game, set and match thought Liz as she stepped back slightly from Jeremy and Saul, who were glowering at one another with blazing intensity. This was it, she thought, her plan was about to be finalised and she'd barely have had to lift a finger to get what she wanted, the sense of victory was so strong that it was only with great effort that she did not smile widely.

The tangibly hostile atmosphere was interrupted by the slow opening of the entrance to the cottage. The figure walked along the small corridor and entered the living room, the three living inhabitants agog with a mixture of apprehension and disbelief.

"Err, is it ok if I get myself something to drink and use your toilet?" the girl said with her silky smooth voice.

Liz blushed with anger, realising her plan faced potential ruin as she stared at the elegantly beautiful Frankie Almond Smith (Girl #14).

* * *

"Ok girls," said Simon Holcombe (Boy #6) as emerged from one of the apartment's bedrooms, "right now what do you want more than anything in the world?"

Tulista Patel (Girl #1) and Joanna Simpson (Girl #5) looked at one another with a mixture amusement and confusion. Since Joanna's cathartic spillage of emotion the atmosphere had become more relaxed and infinitely less tense; the guard patrol around the flat had been more or less abandoned whilst Tulista maternally comforted Joanna.

"Hmm," said Joanna, "I'm torn between bubble bath and Mr. Samuel's head on a silver platter – how about you Tulista?"

Tulista stopped chuckling and became solemn, "I just want to see Krisha again," she said in an almost inaudible whisper, Simon and Joanna looked awkwardly at each other in discomfiture. Seeing this, Tulista quickly added, "or a helicopter with a pilot who could fly us out of here, or maybe even a super computer that could crash the BR admin system."

"Your wish madam," said Simon in an exaggeratedly pompous voice "is my command." Simon gave a bow and drew out a laptop from his school rucksack. Tulista and Joanna stared bewilderedly at it.

"You've had this all the time we've been here?" asked Tulista.

"Yep, but what with all the carnage and fear it sorta slipped my mind," Simon answered, trying not to let his gaze linger too obviously on Tulista's perfect face.

"This doesn't make sense, they checked our bags when they brought us to the island – they wouldn't have let you keep _that_ of all things," said Joanna with atypical scepticism.

"Ah but my bag has one thing that nobody – least of all the klutzes that run the Battle Royale – could have reckoned on," Simon continued, pleased by the look of expectation that spread across the faces of his two female compatriots, "a secret pouch to be precise."

There was a pause.

"And did your bag come custom made with this err...hiding place?" said Joanna with just a hint of ridicule.

"Actually," said Simon, looking slightly embarrassed, "I sewed it in myself."

"How manly," giggled Tulista.

"Oh yes _very _macho, I agree," Simon said dryly, grinning self-deprecatingly. For a few blissful seconds he and Tulista maintained an unbroken gaze with one another, before they quickly averted their eyes out of mild embarrassment. Joanna surreptitiously sniggered.

"Why the hell did you sew a pouch in your backpack?" she laughed.

"The simple answer is so I could bring my laptop on the Geography field trip – Mr. Channing knows that I take it with me pretty much wherever I go because my handwriting's so fucking awful and I need to make things legible if I actually want to get decent grades, but he didn't want me taking it on the field trip."

"Why?" asked the nonplussed Tulista.

"Because the trip was supposed to involve hiking and sloshing about in mud and rain, the laptop could have got damaged and my parents could, in theory, have held the school accountable and made them pay for a new one – something Mr. Channing didn't want to happen, so he checked my bag before we'd boarded the bus to ensure it wasn't there." Simon gave a self-congratulatory smile, "But I was already two steps ahead of him and had created the pouch which I knew he wouldn't be able to find."

"Slick," said Tulista.

"Very slick," Joanna concurred.

"But I'm no hacker so please don't ask me to launch an uber-virus against the Battle Royale administrators – truth be told I'm not sure there's very much I can actually _do_ with a laptop," said Simon ruefully.

"Surely you can look up porno?" said Joanna with a knowing smile.

"Apart from that, of course," laughed an unabashed Simon.

"Well hey, look on the bright side; at least we can spend the last hours of our lives playing solitaire and pinball," quipped Tulista. This caustically witty comment was intended to be taken lightly, but Tulista's unmistakably cynical tone brought the group's surprisingly flippant tittering to a standstill.

After an uncomfortably long pause Joanna spoke up "Simon, can you make contact with anybody using the computer?"

"Sure, my laptop has a modem and so long as the person who I try to contact has one too, I could potentially be able to communicate with somebody."

Joanna smiled broadly, "Well then, you'd better get on with it,"

"Who exactly do you want me to try and get in touch with – assuming that I'm able to?" asked Simon.

Joanna's smile widened, "Can't you guess?"

* * *

"Are you fucking kidding? Of course it was her!" wailed Liz, "She must have climbed in through the window, poisoned Anthony and snuck out again whilst I was in the kitchen."

"Nice theory Miss Marple, but why would anybody want to go to such lengths to kill someone that way when they could just shoot 'em?" Jeremy challenged in between coughing profusely as the pernicious acid chomped away at his lungs.

"I didn't kill anyone!" yelled Frankie, they'd lured her into the living room and now she was cornered, unable to get out.

"Oh yeah?" snarled Saul, "Then what about Jun?"

"An accident," snapped Frankie, feeling a sharp pain in her stomach as the memory returned to her.

"Bullshit!" retorted Saul.

"If she did poison Anthony, why are there no signs of a struggle? People don't generally guzzle down cyanide just because somebody tells them to," Jeremy said with unmasked aggression.

"The fucking place is doused in puke how can you tell whether or not there was a fucking wrestling match here? _And_ the window was open, what does that tell you?" said Liz, shaking her clenched fist as she did so.

"It tells me that somebody opened it; hardly a Herculean feat of human effort!" Jeremy shouted in return.

"Shut the fuck up!" screamed Saul, "Why won't you just accept that this whore, this slut, this anorexic, worthless, pathetic excuse of a human being has just killed our friend!"

Frankie raised her Sig Sauer pistol, gripping it tighter than ever before, "Firstly, you will never _ever_ call me a slut again you fucking weirdo and secondly you will get out of my way and let me out of this shit-hole _right now_!"

"Fuck you!" bellowed Liz. Frankie was, quite literally, stood in a corner, the other three stood about a meter away, encircling her in an impenetrable half moon formation. Saul stood at the centre, Jeremy to his left and Liz to his right.

There is a popular misconception in society that girls are weaker than boys and that a boy will always be able to overpower or resist a girl in a fight. As Liz grabbed Saul's gun-carrying right arm, clasped her hand over his and levelled the pistol at Frankie, it was clear to see who the stronger party was. Liz placed her hand over Saul's; his finger inching towards the trigger has her finger pushed firmly down on his.

Frankie found herself with three unenviable choices before her, a choice that she had approximately half of a second to decide upon; shoot Saul, shoot Liz or shoot the gun from Saul's hand. Frankie scrunched up her eyes and frenziedly fired off three shots, the first and last bullets failed to hit anything other than the ceiling but the second struck Saul directly between the eyes.

As he fell backwards, firing a single shot against the ceiling as he did so, Liz wrenched the Colt. 357 revolver from his hand and aimed it at Frankie. For a few interminable seconds they held each other's gaze, guns trained at one another's heads, before Liz suddenly swivelled to her left to face the flabbergasted Jeremy. She fired two bullets, the first collided with his abdomen and the second with his neck, he slumped to the floor with a subdued thud, trickles of blood leaking from his wounds as he lay there. Within a matter of seconds his breathing ceased.

Liz returned to face Frankie with an exaggerated twirl. Frankie charged towards Liz as though about to perform a rugby tackle, forcefully driving her shoulder into Liz's stomach (Liz gave a high-pitched shriek) and shoving her to the ground. With Frankie now on top of her, Liz futilely attempted to fire her gun whilst Frankie tried to slam the butt of her pistol against Liz's nose, with equally limited success. Eventually Liz swung her revolver against Frankie's head, a soft 'thwock' sound being produced. Though the hit was not as powerful as Liz had intended, Frankie nonetheless reeled in shock and quickly got to her feet, consequently freeing Liz's limbs from the weight she'd applied to them. Frankie fired off a few shot at Liz, all of which missed by a matter of inches and became embedded in the carpet.

Liz swiftly cocked her revolver and aimed it at Frankie, who promptly dived behind a nearby sofa, narrowly missing the bullet that Liz fired at her. Frankie blindly shot off a few more bullets from behind the sofa, not even daring to peek over the top and forlornly hoping that somehow a stray bullet would strike Liz. Liz, in imitation of Frankie, took refuge behind the other sofa, which was directly opposite Frankie's hideout, and also unloaded a volley of shots against her former best friend. The gunfire lasted little more than a minute; neither girl was able to hit the other and all they achieved was catapulting tufts of foam into the air as their bullets sliced through the weak fabric of the sofas. Eventually there was a 'click' as Liz and Frankie's guns revealed their bullet revenues were depleted.

"So is this it?" said Frankie, the realisation that the person she was trying to kill was none other than her best friend was starting to have an impact on her.

"You'd better fucking believe it!" spat Liz in return. The girls had more ammunition, but only in their bags, both of which were clearly out of reach.

Liz vaulted herself over her sofa, Frankie dashed around the side of hers and the two met in the centre of the living room, their new battleground. Frankie raised her right leg upwards, attempting to kick Liz in the chin. Liz caught her leg mid-way and jolted her backwards; Frankie stumbled but managed to retain her balance, quickly dodging Liz's amateurish attempt at delivering an uppercut to her jaw. Frankie tried to punch Liz in the chest, but it was only a half-hearted manoeuvre that Liz was able to parry with ease before thumping her clenched fist into Frankie's abdomen. Now painfully winded, Frankie struggled to block another of Liz's blows, weakly trying to slap her. Liz pulled back her fist and launched it towards Frankie's perfectly shaped nose, Frankie ducked just in time and as Liz staggered forward she forcefully delivered an uppercut to Liz's cheek.

The concussed Liz collapsed to the floor, unconscious and vulnerable. With unnerving speed, Frankie gathered her possessions, took Liz's weapons and supplies and loaded another clip into her Sig Sauer, which she aimed at Liz's forehead.

But she couldn't....

She thought of Anthony, Saul, Jeremy and Jun, death enveloped her, she couldn't breathe and she knew she couldn't do this to her best friend! She saw Jun gasping for breath, her lungs failing her as she died, she thought of Saul, the blood that run down his scarred face as he fell to the floor with a dull thud, and finally she thought of Jeremy and his expression of mortified shock and disbelief as the bullets penetrated his chest. It was all too much...

* * *

When Liz awakened, Frankie was nowhere in sight. Liz knew that the cottage would become a danger zone in a matter of minutes, so she hurriedly left the building, angered to discover that Frankie had thieved all her weaponry and food.

The bitch...

As Liz paced around the outskirts of the forest, trying to think of what to do next, only one thought filled her mind:

Frankie.

She had been lucky this time, thought Liz, the next time they met, Frankie would regret having _ever_ left her alive...

24 Students Remain.


	13. Hour 11: 24 Students Remaining

Day 1 10:01 AM

Jewel Siu Tung (Girl #10) had never been much of a lone warrior in school; she was in constant need of the security that the clique of pampered socialites she hung out with could supposedly provide her with, never daring to brave the halls of Bray Wood without being flanked by one of Frankie's lackeys. It seemed only fitting that she now progressed through the wilderness of the forest in tandem with a group of female cohorts, though she considered this motley crew to be only barely acceptable for a girl of her status. Sue Cathcart (Girl #3) was leading the pack, sporadically aiming her Uzi at the surrounding shrubbery whilst Anne Priestly (Girl #11) covered the girls' backs, nonchalantly trudging along with her Colt 45. held loosely in her shooting hand, seemingly indifferent to the possibility of an impromptu ambush. Jewel, Sylvie Becker (Girl #15) and Daisy Donahue (Girl #4) marched along in the middle, furtively surveying the undergrowth for attackers and anxiously checking their watches to see how much longer it would take them to reach the infirmary. Jewel knew they were the most poorly armed members of the group – her nunchaku and Daisy's whip would hardly provide ample defence against an assailant armed with automatic weaponry and if Sylvie had anything better in regards to armaments she was certainly managing to keep it well hidden, having refused to show any of the girls, even Daisy, her weapon.

"How long will this take?" hissed Jewel under her breath, silence – according to Anne – was of paramount importance when they were travelling out in the open.

"It'll take as long it takes, don't drop the pace!" responded Anne, slightly pushing Jewel forward as she did so. Jewel scowled: she wasn't accustomed to being bossed around, least of all by a non-entity like Anne.

The group continued onward. Despite the inviting glow of the sun and the greenness of their surroundings the atmosphere was tainted with fear and paranoia, partly because the wind's continued rustling of the bushes instilled each of them with a momentary sense of panic.

"Daisy, I'm frightened," confided Sylvie in a whisper to Daisy.

"Join the club," replied Daisy, "but Sue and Anne are right, we need to make this trip because if we don't…"

Daisy's train of thought was cut short by the abrupt movement in one of the nearby bushes. On this occasion however there was no doubt that the rustling was as result of something other than a light breeze; the unmistakable figure of a schoolboy stood squatting behind the sinewy layers of bramble, though whether he was preparing to attack or simply cowering in terror was unclear.

"I'll check it," said Anne, gripping her pistol and quickly licking her lips. She advanced towards the bush with remarkable confidence, gun at the ready, eyes widened in anticipation.

A yelp emanated from the bush, Anne raised her pistol and aimed. Edward Devereux (Boy #3) meekly stood up from his hiding place; arms raised defensively, a look of total mortification imprinted upon his face. Anne snorted with unconcealed derision and slightly lowered the pistol, glaring at Edward hostilely.

"Talk about an anti-climax," she huffed, "can we move on now?"

Sue shrugged her shoulders; Jewel consented with a quick nod whilst Sylvie simply gazed blankly at the small figure that stood trembling amongst the bushes.

"Daisy?" said Anne flatly.

"Perhaps," ventured Daisy "we should take him with us?"

"NO!" chorused Anne and Sue indignantly. Daisy narrowed her eyes slightly and stepped away from the others and approached Anne.

"The more people we have who aren't trying to kill us, the safer I feel!" she said through gritted teeth.

"Even if we have to take a nut-job like _him_?" sneered Anne in response.

"What do you think Jewel, do we bring him or ditch him? Or to be more exact, do you want to spend the remaining hours of your life with _Edward Devereux_?" asked Sue.

"Err…" began Jewel, "quite frankly, no"

"Well there you go," said Anne triumphantly, "we-vote-no-on-the-weirdo."

"Wow your wit's killing me - whatever happened to being, like, humanitarian Anne? He'll probably die if we don't take him" retorted Daisy, taking another step towards Anne.

"Well I'm more than happy to finish him off now to save him an agonising wait for an unavoidable death, if you want." said Anne with calculated menace. She turned to face the quivering Edward, gave a coy smile, raised her pistol and mimed firing it.

Edward gave a muted gasp, turned on his heel and darted back into the forest.

"Good work Anne, is it any wonder you're the premier bitch of Bray Wood?" Daisy's contempt was transparently obvious; Anne looked at her and shrugged unconcernedly.

"It's a living. Unlike you I just don't…" Anne's reply was prematurely ended by four gunshots, each of which originated from the opposite side of the path. Anne collapsed; the blood flowed freely from her wounds, her mouth now wedged open in an unflattering gape and her glazed eyes lolling up and down. She'd been an ungainly sight in life and a downright hideous one in death. There were a few moments when the girls stood still, trying to digest the information, their eyes maintaining an unwavering gaze on Anne's lifeless corpse.

The was a warrior like cry from the bushes behind the stupefied girls; Phil Argyle (Boy #15) charged from the greenery, trampling the brambles and bracken with his hefty feet as he sped towards the girls, an MP5 slung around his shoulders, bouncing maniacally against his thigh. He shot towards Jewel, a chunky blur of blue blazer and cream shirt and before any of them had time to react he'd hoisted Jewel onto his shoulders – with seemingly very little effort – and hurtled towards the bushes, lightly skipping over Anne's body whilst Jewel frantically tried to free herself from his grip.

There was another horrified pause.

"Let's Rock!" yelled a male voice from further down the path.

"Take cover!" shrieked the understandably panic-stricken Sue. Without a moment's hesitation, Daisy hurried towards Anne's corpse, snatching the Colt 45. from her friend's lifeless hands and ungracefully hurling herself into the bushes. With equal haste, Sue rushed towards the welcoming sight of the particularly large trunk of a nearby oak. Sylvie was left standing dumbstruck in the middle of the path.

Whilst Sue attempted to ascertain the whereabouts of the attackers and Daisy amateurishly struggled to load her pistol, Sylvie stood still. Each and every muscle had been anaesthetized by terror, she could feel her throat tighten, an illusionary coil twisting around her oesophagus and progressively constricting it. She couldn't breathe; she couldn't cry out, she was helpless. For a moment time seemed to cease, sounds became muffled and her vision blurred as tears streaked down her cheeks whilst she quietly prayed that it would all be over.

She got her wish.

Daisy, finally having loaded her pistol, looked up to see the stationary Sylvie tumble backwards and roll into the bushes as she was struck in the chest by a buckshot from Tian's shotgun. For a moment she said nothing, but then with a guttural roar she cried out,

"SYLVIE!"

She received no reply.

Tian and Fergal now stood on the edge of the pathway covered by only a few waiflike strands of grass and bracken, Sue raised her Uzi and fired, sending pebbles clattering into the air whilst Tian and Fergal frantically fired from behind their meagre cover.

"Save the emotion for later Daisy! I need your help!" yelled Sue at her distraught and hysterically weepy friend but her words were met with a deaf ear as Daisy slowly rose to her feet and dreamily skulked off into the woodland.

* * *

Jewel continued her struggle to free herself, clawing, biting, spitting, but all in vain. Phil wasn't even running anymore, the strain of having to exercise his flaccid legs having been too much, now forcing him to revert to a wheezing jog. 

"What are you doing with me?" demanded Jewel, fearing she already knew the answer and giving a loud though ineffectual scream of "Help!"

"You and I have unfinished business," replied Phil with a grin that sent Jewel's perfectly toned stomach into a frenzy of repulsed convulsions.

Catching sight a tree trunk that was of adequate size for his purposes, Phil removed his struggling classmate from his shoulders and pressed her - with almost gentlemanly care- face first against the bark. In the intervening moments between his capture of Jewel and their arrival at this nicely secluded spot in the forest, Phil had mapped out with the meticulous precision of a skilled pornographer just how he was to proceed in his enjoyment of the fleshly pleasure that Jewel was now to offer him – regardless of whether she wanted to or not.

First stop, her skirt.

But Phil had mad one serious oversight in his appraisal of the supposed ease with which he could 'procure' what he wanted from Jewel. His slackened pace in journeying to this particular tree had facilitated his being unknowingly stalked by one of his classmates, a classmate who unfortunately at this moment in time was not only in an emotional state that could be most euphemistically described as disgruntled, but also happened to be standing directly behind him.

"You fucking scum!"

Phil turned. There was the muffled sound of a whiplash followed by the angry grunts of the assault's unfortunate recipient. The laceration inflicted by the whip ran across the bridge of Phil's nose, an angry red welt that further marred an already unsightly façade.

"Cunt," he said with frightening quiet.

"Blow me," retorted Daisy with a shrill and rather unhinged cackle.

With the palm of apelike hand Phil pushed against Daisy's cutely dimpled face, snatching the pistol she'd tucked into her skirt's waistband as she toppled backward. He raised the Colt. 45 and spun on his heel to face his intended victim. But Jewel had anticipated this. With the utmost of feminine grace she raised her right leg and arced it towards Phil's outstretched hand, easily kicking the pistol from his stubby fingers. The startled Phil had little time to respond and Jewel took quick advantage of this by driving her knuckles into his left cheekbone, an action that yielded just the faintest sound of a crunch. Phil was now out cold and for once it hadn't been as a consequence of his notorious binge drinking.

The girls looked intensely at each other. There was a pregnant pause.

"Let's book" offered Jewel, Daisy nodding in acquiescence as she picked up the pistol and graciously handed it to her new ally.

* * *

The gun battle was coming to a stalemate: neither of the parties had achieved any injuries and both were beginning to feel concerned about the quotient ammunition they were rapidly expending. Sue was the first to dash off into the forest, aimlessly firing a trail of bullets as she did so. It was only after a protracted debate that Fergal had eventually convinced Tian that it would serve them better to go looking for the AWOL Phil than to pursue a famously nimble female such as Sue.

A short timeafter they'd departed Sylvie sat up, nursing her sore chest. The bullet proof vest of hers had stopped the bullets but not the bruising and she was left with one considerable concern: had the impact of the shotgun pellet done any damage to the unborn foetus that was gestating in her womb?

24 Students Remaining


End file.
